GREAT MEN'S 
 SONS
 
 L 
 
 C 5V
 
 BY E. S. BROOKS. 
 
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 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK AND LONDON.
 
 1'ETER ANU HIS MOTHER HIDING THE MANUSCRIPTS. 
 Frontispiece,
 
 GREAT MEN'S SONS 
 
 WHO THEY WERE, WHAT THEY DID, AND 
 HOW THEY TURNED OUT 
 
 A GLIMPSE AT THE SONS OF THE WORLD'S 
 MIGHTIEST MEN FROM SOCRATES 
 TO NAPOLEON 
 
 BY 
 
 ELBRIDGE S. BROOKS 
 
 Author of "Historic Boys," "Historic Girls," "The Story of the United 
 
 States," "The Century Book for Young Americans," 
 
 " A Boy of the First Empire," etc. 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 NEW YORK LONDON 
 
 27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 24 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND 
 
 &{jc pinitktrbotlur |]rcss 
 1895
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1895 
 
 BY 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 Entered at Stationer's Hall, London 
 
 Ube fcnfcberbocfeer press, t\e\v tRocbellc,
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THIS book is not intended as an argument for 
 or against the disputed doctrine of heredity. 
 It does not seek to establish comparisons or draw 
 conclusions. It simply introduces certain boys of 
 famous parentage to those boys and girls of to-day 
 who are naturally inquisitive as to what this or 
 that great man's son did in the world or what he 
 amounted to. 
 
 To satisfy this inquiry the writer has made a 
 careful hunt through the records of the past for the 
 sons of the world's great men, with the result here- 
 with set down. 
 
 In certain eminent instances the search was un- 
 availing. Julius Csesar, Michelangelo, and George 
 Washington had no children ; one or two other 
 famous persons, who might reasonably have found 
 place in the list, had no sons. But the seventeen 
 great men selected are representative, and their 
 sons will not, it is hoped, prove uninteresting. To 
 
 2125984
 
 IV PREFACE. 
 
 the story of each of the boys whose careers are 
 here given a lesson is attached ; but the writer 
 never did care to draw morals. He who oins 
 may read. 
 
 Six of the sketches included in this volume 
 appeared originally in Harper s Round Table. For 
 permission to use them here the writer makes due 
 acknowledgment. He also wishes to accord credit 
 to Messrs. Harper & Brothers for certain of the 
 illustrations used in the stories of the son of 
 Alexander, the son of Charlemagne, and the son of 
 Luther, and for the same courtesy in the matter of 
 illustrations to the Century Company and the 
 Lothrop Publishing Company. Acknowledgment 
 should also be made for the courtesy of research 
 accorded by the Library of Harvard University and 
 the Public Library of Somerville, Massachusetts. 
 
 E. S. B.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. THE SON OF SOCRATES 
 
 ( ' Lamprocles the Street Boy.) 
 
 II. THE SON OF ALEXANDER . 
 
 (Alexander the Eagle.) 
 
 III. THE SON OF CICERO .... 
 
 (Marcus the Consul.) 
 
 IV. THE SON OF MARCUS AURELIUS 
 
 ( ' Commodus the Gladiator.) 
 
 V. THE SON OF CONSTANTINE 
 
 ( Constantius the Emperor.) 
 
 VI. THE SON OF MAHOMET 
 
 (Ibrahim the Baby.) 
 
 VII. THE SON OF CHARLEMAGNE 
 
 (Louis the Well-intentioned.) 
 
 VIII. THE SON OF ALFRED .... 
 
 ( Edward the Unconquered.) 
 
 IX. THE SON OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR 
 
 (Henry the Scholar.) 
 
 X. THE SON OF SALADIN . 
 
 (Afdhalthe Unlucky.) 
 
 17 
 38 
 
 57 
 
 77 
 
 98 
 
 123 
 
 141 
 
 160 
 
 1 80
 
 vi CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XI. THE SON OF DANTE ... . .192 
 
 (Peter the Helper.) 
 
 XII. THE SON OF TAMERLANE .... 207 
 
 (Rokh the Intrepid.) 
 
 XIII. THE SON OF COLUMBUS 221 
 
 (Diego the Admiral.) 
 
 XIV. THE SON OF LUTHER 244 
 
 (Hans the Heavy.) 
 
 XV. THE SON OF SHAKSPERE ..... 259 
 
 (Hamnet the Boy.) 
 
 XVI. THE SON OF CROMWELL 273 
 
 (Richard the I.azy.) 
 
 XVII. THE SON OF NAPOLEON 286 
 
 (Napoleon the Forlorn.)
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PETER AND HIS MOTHER HIDING THE MANUSCRIPTS, 
 
 Frontispiece 
 " SOCRATES DID NOT LIKE TO HEAR HIS BOY HAVING 
 
 WORDS WITH THE MOTHER " . . . .5 
 
 " SOCRATES WAS A WONDERFUL ' CONVERSATIONALIST,' ' n 
 " HE PREFERRED EATING MELONS WITH NE'ER-DO- 
 WELLS ON THE SUNNY SIDE OF A WALL " . . 15 
 EQUESTRIAN STATUE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT . 20 
 
 '' THERE WAS GORGEOUSNESS AND DISPLAY AROUND THE 
 BOY-KING'S CRADLE "...... 
 
 " IT WAS A DREADFUL SIEGE" . 
 ' To THE CAPTAIN GLAUCUS,' THE MESSAGE RAN " 
 
 ALEXANDER THE LITTLE . . . . 
 
 A PUPIL OF EPAMINONDAS . . 
 
 A TUMBLER'S SHOW IN THE STREETS OF ROME 
 
 " DEAR DAUGHTER TULLIA " . . . 
 
 "YOUNG MARCUS CAUGHT THE WAR FEVER" 
 
 "YOUNG CICERO WENT OFTENER TO THE CIRCUS THAN 
 TO LECTURES " . 
 
 48
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 YOUNG MARK CICERO LEADING A CAVALRY CHARGE . 51 
 ONE OF THE AMUSEMENTS OF THE ROMANS A SEA- 
 FIGHT IN THE CIRCUS ... -55 
 THE EMPEROR COMMODUS AS " HERCULES " . 59 
 " FOR Two YEARS THEY FOUGHT ALONG THE DANUBE," 65 
 MASTER OF THE WORLD AT NINETEEN . . 69 
 RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF ANTONINUS AND FAUSTINA IN 
 
 ROME .71 
 
 ONE OF THE PLEASURES OF COMMODUS A GLADIATORIAL 
 
 COMBAT IN THE CIRCUS 75 
 
 THE TRAINING OF THE SON OF CONSTANTINE A BOAR 
 
 FIGHT IN THE FOREST OF SIRMIUM . . 79 
 
 THE TRAGEDY AT SIRMIUM 83 
 
 THE VISION OF CONSTANTINE 87 
 
 THE SHEPHERD BOY WHO BECAME A KING . . . 101 
 EL-KASWA, THE CAMEL ....... 105 
 
 " HE LIKED NOTHING BETTER THAN A ROMP WITH HIS 
 
 LITTLE IBRAHIM "....... 109 
 
 A SUPPOSED PRINT OF MOHAMMED . . . . . 113 
 
 AN EASTERN MOSQUE . . . . . . .115 
 
 CHARLES THE HAMMER TURNING BACK THE TIDE OF 
 
 MOHAMMEDAN CONQUEST . . . f .119 
 
 " THERE WERE FLUTTERING STANDARDS AND MELODIOUS 
 
 TRUMPETS" . I2 5 
 
 KING OF THE WHOLE LAND 128 
 
 Louis THE GENTLE KNIGHT 129
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, ix 
 
 PACK 
 
 CHARLEMAGNE THE EMPEROR . . ... . 133 
 
 ALFRED THE GREAT IN HIS STUDY ..... 143 
 
 THE BOYHOOD OF EDWARD THE ATHELING " HE WAS 
 
 NOT AN EAGER SCHOLAR IN THE PALACE-SCHOOL".. 145 
 THE MANHOOD OF ALFRED'S SON " WARLIKE AND VIC- 
 TORIOUS FROM BOYHOOD " 149 
 
 THE TRAINING OF A NORMAN PRINCE THE BOYHOOD 
 
 OF HENRY OF ENGLAND ...... 165 
 
 " OFF POSTED HENRY FOR ' THE HOARD ' ' . . 167 
 
 " BROTHERLY LOVE " IN OLDEN TIMES .... 169 
 
 CORONATION OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR . . -173 
 IN KING HENRY'S DAY : a TRAVELLING MINSTREL . 177 
 " ' SPEED TO AFDHAL,' SALADIN SAID TO THE KNEELING 
 
 COURIER" 183 
 
 A PARLEY BETWEEN THE HOSTILE BROTHERS . . 188 
 No PRAISE FOR AFDHAL ....... 190 
 
 THE PONTE VECCHIO, FLORENCE . . . . . 192 
 
 " A BRIGHT AND GENTLE BOY WAS THE SON OF DANTE " 194 
 " PRINCE CHARLES OF VALOIS RODE INTO FLORENCE " . 195 
 THE MOB AT DANTE'S HOME . . . -. . .198 
 PETER AND HIS MOTHER HIDING THE MANUSCRIPTS . 201 
 DANTE (BRONZE BUST, FIFTEENTH CENTURY) . . 203 
 DANTE'S MONUMENT IN RAVENNA ..... 205 
 
 " MY SON is MARKED FOR LEADERSHIP," SAID TAMERLANE 209 
 " Do THEY MEAN TO MAKE A WOMAN OF YOU, BOY ? " 
 
 CRIED TAMERLANE ....... 213
 
 X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 " THEY FOUGHT AND QUARRELLED OVER THEIR MIGHTY 
 
 INHERITANCE" . , 217 
 
 CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS ('FROM THE PORTRAIT IN THE 
 
 .MARINE MUSEUM AT MADRID) . . . . 225 
 
 FROM THE WINDOW OF LA RABIDA . . 227 
 
 COLUMBUS BEFORE ISABELLA ...... 229 
 
 THE BRIDGE OF PINES '. . . . ... 233 
 
 BRONZE STATUE OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS BEFORE 
 
 THE CATHEDRAL OF SANTO DOMINGO CITY . . 237 
 THE HOMANAJE, OR CASTLE OF DON DIEGO COLUMBUS 
 
 AT SANTO DOMINGO CITY (STILL STANDING) . . 240 
 THE PALACE OF DON DIEGO COLUMBUS, STILL STAND- 
 ING IN SANTO DOMINGO CITY 241 
 
 LUTHER WITH HIS THESES BEFORE THE CHURCH DOOR 
 
 AT WITTENBERG . . ... . . 247 
 
 JOHN WAS THE COMPANION OF HIS FATHER IN MANY 
 
 EXPEDITIONS -251 
 
 MASTER WILLIAM SHAKSPERE, OF NEW PLACE IN STRAT- 
 FORD .......... 263 
 
 " MASTER WILLIAM SHAKSPERE HAS COME FROM TOWN," 269 
 THE BATTLE OF MARSTON MOOR . . . . . 277 
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL (PAINTING BY P. LELY, 1653) . . 281 
 NAPOLEON'S FAREWELL TO HIS SON .... 293 
 
 THE SON OF NAPOLEON IN THE UNIFORM OF AN 
 
 AUSTRIAN COLONEL . . . . . . . 297
 
 GREAT MEN'S SONS.
 
 I. 
 
 THE SON OF SOCRATES. 
 
 (B. C. 410 J 
 
 IN a certain street in Athens, twenty-three cen- 
 turies ago, an old man sat upon his doorstep 
 talking to his son. 
 
 The street was narrow and dirty ; but it ran from 
 the foot of Museum Hill, straight to the market- 
 place, the centre of the city's trade and life. The 
 house was small and mean ; but its open doorway 
 looked out upon the pillared glories of the Acropo- 
 lis, not half a mile away. The man was old and 
 far from handsome ; he was, in fact, bald-headed, 
 snub-nosed, big-eyed, pot-bellied, and bandy-legged ; 
 but, like the iron casket of Portia, that homely ex- 
 terior contained a priceless jewel ; for this ugly old 
 Athenian was the greatest man of all antiquity, the 
 noblest mind among all the sons of men. He was 
 Socrates.
 
 2 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 The boy was sixteen and far from attractive in 
 face or form ; but his name has outlived that of mil- 
 lions of brighter and braver and more beautiful 
 boys, simply because he was the son of his father. 
 He was Lamprocles, the eldest son of Socrates. 
 
 It was early in the morning and Athens was just 
 astir. There had evidently been some trouble in the 
 house of Socrates ; for, through the open doorway, 
 came the vindictive clashing of pots and pans, the 
 complaining cries of Lamprocles's little brothers, 
 and the raised voice of an angry woman. 
 
 And there had been trouble. Lamprocles and 
 his mother Xanthippe famous for twenty-three 
 hundred years as the scolding wife of Socrates- 
 had been having high words that very morning ; 
 and when his mother had scolded him long and 
 loudly, Lamprocles had talked back, and had been 
 impudent and unruly to his high-tempered but 
 sorely-tried mother. 
 
 For Xanthippe, the mother of Lamprocles and 
 wife of Socrates, was a sorely-tried woman. She 
 had come of a good family in Athens, and had 
 married this ugly-looking old man, whose father 
 was an image-maker and whose mother was a nurse. 
 She had hoped to be well supported and to have 
 fine clothes and a nice house ; but philosophers are 
 sometimes careless and not always what the world 
 calls "good providers," and poor Xanthippe had
 
 THE SON OF SOCKATES. 3 
 
 hard work to keep house and bring up her three 
 boys, when her absent-minded old husband would 
 not make and would not take money, and declared 
 that anybody could live comfortably on ten cents a 
 day. So she was sorely, tried to make both ends 
 meet ; naturally, she did not think very much of her 
 husband's deep thoughts and noble words while he 
 went about bare-footed and dirty, while her boys 
 were as dirty and as illy clad as he, and while she had 
 not a decent cloak to her name, but was obliged to 
 borrow her husband's greasy old mantle to throw 
 over her shoulders if she wished to call on a neigh- 
 bor or take a walk to the market-place. 
 
 But if Socrates was careless about his looks and 
 thoughtless as to home-comforts, he did not like to 
 hear his boy having words with the mother. So 
 that morning, while he sat on his doorstep to escape 
 the turmoil within the house, he called Lamprocles 
 to him. 
 
 The boy came quickly enough. To tell the 
 truth, he welcomed any call that took him beyond 
 the reach of his mother's sharp tongue. His father 
 was waiting for him on the doorstep of the little 
 house. He did not know why his father wished to 
 see him. 
 
 He evidently did not expect a lecture, for Soc- 
 rates never scolded. Indeed, the philosopher was 
 not very particular about disciplining his children.
 
 4 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 Perhaps he thought they had enough of that from 
 the other side of the house. At any rate, he had 
 little to do in his household affairs, for most of his 
 time was passed in the public places of Athens, 
 where he was regarded as a man of great intellect 
 even if he was what we call " shiftless." So his 
 son was counted as among the street boys of Athens 
 a boy who preferred to be "hail fellow" with 
 the roughs and loafers of old Athens, rather than 
 with the bright boys of the market-place and the 
 academy, a young fellow without his father's 
 brains or his mother's " grit," and neither a very 
 bright nor desirable companion. 
 
 Instead, therefore, of scolding the boy as Xan- 
 thippe had done, Socrates tried to reason with his 
 son, and show him how wicked it was for a boy to 
 be impudent and ugly to his mother. 
 
 Socrates was what we call a wonderful " conver- 
 sationalist." He was the finest talker the world 
 has ever seen. Up in Concord, in the State of 
 Massachusetts, there lived not many years ago a 
 man somewhat like him in this respect, the father 
 of the famous " Little Women." 
 
 Socrates never wrote a book ; he left scarcely a 
 written line by which to be remembered; but he 
 drew about him those who did remember and who 
 did write ; and two of these men, Xenophon the 
 soldier, and Plato the philosopher, wrote down the
 
 SOCRATES DID NOT LIKE TO HEAR HIS BOY HAVING WORDS 
 WITH THE MOTHER."
 
 THE SON OF SOCRATES. J 
 
 wonderful conversations and the noble talks of this 
 remarkable old man. These have lived for ages 
 the inspiration and the cause of some of the grand- 
 est thoughts that men have given to the world. 
 For Socrates has well been called the Father of 
 Philosophy, the founder of Athens's most glorious 
 empire the empire of thought. And it is to 
 Xenophon that we are indebted for the knowl- 
 edge of this talk that Socrates had with his son 
 Lamprocles, in the doorway of their shabby little 
 house at the foot of Museum Hill. 
 
 Socrates had a way of conversing by questions. 
 Often he would not assert or declare a thing, but, 
 by skilfully questioning the one with whom he was 
 talking, he would cause his listener to, himself, 
 gradually advance matters by direct answers, until 
 the point in question was made clear. Then the 
 wise old philosopher would make his grand conclu- 
 sion, or, by a simple utterance of the truth he had 
 sought to develop, would create and emphasize a 
 noble and everlasting moral. It made no differ- 
 ence whether his talk was with the highest or the 
 lowest in Greece, for Socrates was no respecter of 
 persons ; whether it was with a cattle-driver or a 
 judge, the mighty Pericles or the " freshest " boy 
 in Athens (in fact, Socrates had an especial hold 
 upon the boys and young men of his much-loved 
 city), the questions were just as simple, the reason-
 
 8 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 ing just as direct, the point made and the conclu- 
 sion announced, just as emphatic. 
 
 So, in this talk with the young Lamprocles, the 
 father began by mildly questioning his sulky son ; 
 for Lamprocles undoubtedly was sulky and in bad 
 humor because of his " row " with his mother. 
 
 " See here, my boy," said Socrates ; " do you not 
 know that there are some people in the world who 
 are called ungrateful ? " 
 
 Of course he knew it, Lamprocles replied a 
 little ungraciously and just a bit sullenly. 
 
 "And do you not think," continued the father, 
 " that people who are ungrateful are what we call 
 unjust ? " 
 
 To which the boy again replied : " Certainly 
 they are." 
 
 Then, by a skilful but gentle and friendly succes- 
 sion of questions, Socrates led his son to admit 
 that, the greater the benefit conferred the more un- 
 just is he who is ungrateful ; that no benefit could 
 be greater than those conferred by parents, and 
 especially by mothers, on children ; and that, con- 
 sequently, ingratitude to parents is the greatest of 
 evils. And when the sulky boy, seeing that the 
 course of his father's reasoning was one that he 
 could not logically turn aside, tried to brazen it out 
 and say that might be all right, but, " by the Dog ! " 
 his mother had used language to him that no boy
 
 THE SON OF SOCRATES. 9 
 
 could stand, and, as for him, he would rather run 
 away than stand it again, his father, still gently 
 reasoning, calmed him down and told him to re- 
 member all that his mother had borne for him ; he 
 bade the boy think of how that mother had worked 
 and slaved for him, worried when he was sick, 
 rejoiced when he was well again ; then, suddenly, 
 he asked the son whether he really thought his 
 mother was malicious in her treatment of him, 
 when she corrected and scolded him. 
 
 To this Lamprocles indignantly and with much 
 emphasis replied: "The gods forbid, my father, 
 that I should imagine such a thing! " 
 
 Having thus got the young fellow into a better 
 frame of mind, Socrates quietly said: "You are 
 right, my son ; and for my part, I think that if 
 you cannot bear with so excellent a mother, you 
 cannot stand anything that is good." 
 
 From this he led on the boy to see and to admit 
 that neglect or annoyance of parents was really a 
 crime, hated by all men and justly punished by the 
 laws of the land ; that if he hoped to gain the 
 respect and favor of men he must begin by honor- 
 ing his parents ; and the patient father, growing 
 more emphatic and just a bit stern as he proceeded, 
 ending this loving talk, that was really a lecture, 
 by telling Lamprocles that if he were wise he 
 would pray earnestly to the gods to pardon him for
 
 10 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 the harsh words he had said to his mother, and to 
 remember that, if men saw that he neglected his 
 parents, they would rightly despise him; "for," 
 said Socrates, " if men suspect that you have no 
 gratitude to your parents, they will not think it 
 worth their while to do you a kindness ; for they 
 will feel that, should they do so, they would meet 
 with no gratitude in return." 
 
 Having thus made peace between mother and 
 son the old philosopher drew his shabby mantle 
 about him and started upon his regular morning 
 walk to the market-place, the gymnasium, and the 
 baths. And the young men who always liked to 
 hear him talk gathered about him and enjoyed his 
 wise and witty words, asked and answered ques- 
 tions, or applauded loudly when he rebuked some 
 pompous fellow who gave himself airs, or put to 
 shame the selfish man who cared only to advance 
 his own interests at the expense of others. 
 
 It was these latter people of whom Socrates 
 made enemies and who, at last, on a June day in 
 the year 469 B.C., brought about his tragic death. 
 And when, in the prison on the slope of Museum 
 Hill, not far from his humble little home, that final 
 scene of the philosopher's life occurred, and the old 
 man of seventy-two calmly drank off the cup of 
 poison that ended his life, none mourned him more 
 sincerely than did the wife who had so often made
 
 "SOCRATES WAS A WONDERFUL 'CONVERSATIONALIST.'"
 
 THE SON OF SOCRATES. 13 
 
 things unpleasant for him, and the son who had 
 been heedless of his wise and loving words. 
 
 We have just a picture left us of the last sad 
 scene the weeping wife and the lamenting children 
 who realized the loss that was to fall upon their 
 home, and were kindly led from the prison by the 
 friends who had gathered to hear the last words 
 and receive the final lesson from this simple, 
 singular, and grand old man. 
 
 For, whatever the defects of his character and 
 no men are perfect, not even teachers and heroes, 
 Socrates the Athenian was a grand old man. 
 To-day, he might not be esteemed a success in 
 society if he persisted in living as he lived in 
 ancient Athens twenty-three hundred years ago. 
 But remember what men said of him after he had 
 gone. Socrates, so runs the eulogy of the Athen- 
 ians, was so pious, that he did nothing without 
 taking counsel of the gods ; so just, that he never 
 did an injury to any man, while he was the bene- 
 factor of his associates ; so temperate, that he never 
 preferred pleasure to right ; so wise, that in jud- 
 ging of good and evil he was never at fault in a 
 word, "the best and happiest of men." That 
 would be a pretty good record, even for a nine- 
 teenth-century teacher, would it not ? But, after 
 all, it is not with Socrates's life, but with his 
 teachings it is not with his family, but with his
 
 14 GREA T MEN'S SONS. 
 
 principles, that the world has to do ; and the 
 world's best thought and culture have for centuries 
 accepted the teachings of Socrates as the high- 
 water mark of human wisdom. If he could not 
 teach his wife to think wisdom better than houses 
 and clothes, if he could not teach his son to think 
 at all, that must not weigh against his greatness of 
 mind. All boys and girls must learn to depend 
 upon themselves, and if they will not or cannot 
 drink in wisdom from -the wise folks about them, 
 that is their fault and not that of the wise ones 
 unless, indeed, the wise ones do not know how to 
 communicate their wisdom. Socrates knew how to 
 do this as few other teachers could. His son did 
 not inherit the depth of mind nor the strength of 
 soul that his father possessed, and, therefore, he 
 amounted to nothing. 
 
 That the boy did amount to nothing certainly 
 that he did not amount to much we have the 
 records of the past to show. All the authorities 
 agree that this lumpy young Lamprocles was, as 
 we say now, "no good," and preferred eating mel- 
 ons with ne'er-do-wells, on the sunny side of a 
 wall, to wandering in the groves of the learned 
 Academy. Aristotle, who knew the young man 
 well, used him to illustrate an essay on genius and 
 its degeneracy. He tells us that this son of 
 Socrates was dull and fatuous in other words,
 
 THE SON OF SOCRA TES. I / ' 
 
 stupid and heavy-witted. He did not compre- 
 hend, and therefore could not follow his father's 
 wise words and noble precepts, and would scarcely 
 be able to comprehend the real grandeur, for 
 example, of this saying of Socrates, his father : 
 " To want nothing is divine ; to want as little as 
 possible is the nearest approach to the divine life." 
 
 Perhaps we ought not to blame the boy for the 
 moral lack that must have been part of his nature. 
 He is not the only son of a philosopher who has 
 proved himself anything but philosophic. Genius 
 is not always a heritage, and what Sir Philip Sidney 
 defined chivalry to be " high erected thoughts 
 seated in the heart of courtesy," can only be 
 developed in a boy or girl of principle, of ambition, 
 of intelligence, and of spirit. You know, perhaps, 
 now, the meaning of another quaint and homely 
 saying of the long-ago: "You can't make a silk 
 purse out of a sow's ear." 
 
 So let us not blame our friend Lamprocles'; let 
 us pity him. He had neither the wit to make the 
 most of a noble example, nor the pluck to be any- 
 thing more than what the boys of to-day call, in 
 expressive if somewhat slangy phrase, a " chump." 
 We know little more concerning him than the 
 glimpse we have of him in this talk with his father 
 on the doorstep of his Athenian home. We have 
 only the record that, after his father's death, he
 
 i8 
 
 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 never amounted to much. He and his two brothers 
 were esteemed, as I have told you, utterly dull and 
 stupid ; and, even when he grew to manhood, there 
 was nothing about the young Lamprocles to remind 
 men that he was the son of Socrates the wisest 
 and noblest of all the wise and noble men of 
 ancient Greece.
 
 II. 
 
 THE SON OF ALEXANDER. 
 
 (B.C. 320.) 
 
 IN the mighty palace of the ancient kings at 
 Babylon there lay, three hundred and twenty- 
 three years before the Divine Baby slept in the 
 manger at Bethlehem, a very small boy with a 
 very great name. He was Alexander, the Shield, 
 the Great Lord, Blessed, That liveth Forever. He 
 was constitutional King of Macedon, Captain- 
 General of Greece, and Monarch of Asia. 
 
 As yet his name was the biggest part of him ; 
 for he was a very small baby, without a father, 
 with a girl-mother, who scarcely knew what to do, 
 and with fierce and selfish men contending for his 
 possession, and struggling to divide among them- 
 selves the vast empire that this baby's father had 
 left without a head. For this small boy's father 
 had been known as Alexander the Great, King of 
 Macedon, and Conqueror of the World, 
 
 '9
 
 20 GREA T MEN'S SONS. 
 
 The little Alexander's mother was the daughter 
 of a war-chief of Bactria that far-off land of Cen- 
 tral Asia which we now know as Bokhara in Tur- 
 kestan. She is said to have been the most beautiful 
 girl in all Asia when, in the year 328 B.C., the young 
 conqueror from the west, who had defeated and 
 overthrown her father, first captured and then mar- 
 
 EQUESTRIAN STATUE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 
 
 (From the statue in the National Museum, Naples.) 
 
 ried the fair Roxana. But when, in the month of 
 May, 323 B.C., her husband died in the great palace 
 at Babylon the mighty city which he determined 
 to make the capital of his vast empire, the Lady 
 Roxana was a most puzzled young queen. And
 
 THE SON OF ALEXANDER. 2 I 
 
 before the summer was over, she was a very anxious 
 young mother ; for the baby Alexander was born 
 soon after his father's death, and, at once, five, at 
 least, of Alexander's generals were tearing in pieces 
 the great empire which they had decided should 
 belong to the son of Alexander, trying, each one 
 of them, to steal from it a kingdom for himself. 
 
 But, meantime, the little Alexander was, practi- 
 cally, Alexander the Imperial. And there he lay in 
 his gilded bed, or in his mother's arms. The gen- 
 erals and high officers of state came in and out of 
 the splendid palace at Babylon, in which Belshazzar 
 had feasted and Cyrus had ruled ; and they pros- 
 trated themselves before this baby-king, and did all 
 those ridiculous things the Oriental court ceremo- 
 nial demands, and which this baby's father, though 
 he hated them (being a free Macedonian), had yet 
 insisted upon, because he saw that only by such 
 forms and ceremonies could he retain his power 
 over the Persians and other Eastern nations that 
 he had conquered. 
 
 So there was gorgeousness and gilding and dis- 
 play enough around the boy-king's cradle ; but it 
 was all a hollow show. Underneath it lay a de- 
 termination, among those whose palaver seemed 
 the most profound in this ceremonial, to be 
 speedily rid of the boy. It grew as he grew, and it 
 filled his short life with woe and worry. The son
 
 22 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 of Alexander learned, full early in his life, the 
 truth of the often-repeated saying, " Uneasy lies 
 the head that wears a crown." 
 
 Almost before the little King Alexander was 
 able to walk he was obliged to leave the great 
 palace at Babylon and go to the western part of his 
 father's empire, the shores of Greece and Mace- 
 don. For the generals who were, so they said, 
 governing his empire for him, speedily fell to fight- 
 ing among themselves for the mastery, and only 
 one of the five seemed at all favorable to the boy- 
 king. This was Antigonus, his uncle. So the 
 boy and his mother hurried away from Babylon, 
 and went to live with little Alexander's grand- 
 
 o 
 
 mother in Greece, because it was thought that the 
 only way to hold the generals and soldiers loyal to 
 the little king was to keep him in sight as much 
 as possible. He was trotted about from city to 
 city and from camp to camp, until all his early 
 years seemed spent "on the go," and he had little 
 time for rest or play, or for the education that was 
 due his rank as the son of his father and the Lord 
 of the World, as he was pompously styled. 
 
 The most ambitious and determined of the five 
 quarrelling generals was Cassander, the regent of 
 Macedon. He was the dead Alexander's brother- 
 in-law and the little Alexander's uncle ; but he 
 hated both father and son, because one had slighted
 
 THE SON OF ALEXANDER. 2$ 
 
 him and the other stood in his way. So he did 
 not rest until he had forced his rivals into a bitter 
 quarrel for supremacy that led into a long and 
 bloody war. 
 
 It was during this war that little Alexander's 
 grandmother, the Princess Olympias, tried to take 
 things into her own hands and punish Cassander. 
 Olympias was a warlike and vindictive old lady ; 
 she hated Cassander, and was determined to have 
 her grandson as firmly placed upon his throne as 
 her son, his father, had been. She gathered an 
 army in western Greece and marched against Cas- 
 sander. But that shrewd leader hurried his army 
 forward and placed himself between Olympias and 
 the road by "which she hoped to reach Pella, the 
 Macedonian capital. Thereupon the old princess 
 shut herself up in the city of Pydna, an old town 
 of Macedonia, which lies at the head of what is 
 now called, on your map of Turkey-in-Europe, the 
 Gulf of Salonica ; and it is there that, in the year 
 316 B.C., we catch a second brief glimpse of the 
 son of Alexander, now a little fellow of seven 
 years. 
 
 For he and his mother were with his grand- 
 mother's army, and were hurried into Pydna by 
 that energetic old lady when she ran away from 
 Cassander. It was a beautiful spot to live in, this 
 old walled town of Pydna ; it was built three miles
 
 26 
 
 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 back from the sea, in a fine and fertile region, and 
 almost under the shadow of that famous old hill, 
 the superb Mount Olympus, the fabled home of 
 the gods of Greece. 
 
 But it was anything but a beautiful home for 
 poor little King Alexander, when he found himself 
 locked behind its walls. For Cassander, the Mace- 
 donian, marched his soldiers against it, and dug a 
 great trench all around it, and set up all the dread- 
 ful old-time war-engines about it, and arranged 
 either to batter down its walls or starve out its 
 inhabitants. 
 
 " IT WAS A DREADFUL SIEGE." 
 
 It was a dreadful siege. Provisions grew scarce 
 and finally gave out altogether, and poor little 
 Alexander went to bed hungry many a night. 
 The horses, the mules, and the dogs were killed 
 for food ; the great war elephants, having nothing 
 to eat but sawdust, grew too weak to be of any
 
 THE SON OF ALEXANDER. 2/ 
 
 use, and, finally, they, together with their useless 
 drivers, were also killed and eaten by the soldiers. 
 
 At last things became so desperate that the little 
 king's warlike grandmother tried to escape with 
 Alexander. But just as everything was ready, and 
 a swift galley was waiting for them in the harbor, 
 along came that dreadful Cassander and captured 
 the galley before the king and his grandmother 
 could get to it. They hurried back inside the city 
 again, but it was of no use trying longer to stand 
 the siege. So Olympias and the little king sur- 
 rendered themselves to Cassander, after getting 
 him to promise to do them no harm. 
 
 But those were the days when promises did not 
 amount to much. Very soon after Alexander and 
 his grandmother had surrendered themselves to 
 Cassander, that lying young Macedonian went 
 back on all his solemn promises. He had the am- 
 bitious old lady killed, and he sent Alexander and 
 his mother into imprisonment. 
 
 The boy's home was now in the strong and 
 gloomy citadel in the Macedonian city of Am- 
 phipolis, quite an important place in those days ; it 
 stood three miles from the sea. on the river Stry- 
 mon, and at the head of what is now called, on 
 your map of Turkey-in-Europe, the Gulf of Or- 
 phano. Here, in this massive and prison-like citadel 
 of Amphipolis " the town that is surrounded by
 
 28 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 water," we get our last glimpse of the son of 
 Alexander. 
 
 Things had come to a crisis between the stronger 
 of the five generals Cassander and Antigonus. 
 After much fighting came a truce. Then a plan, 
 submitted to Cassander by Antigonus, proposed 
 that Cassander should rule Alexander's empire in 
 Europe, and Antigonus in Asia, until the boy-king 
 should come of age. 
 
 But Cassander remembered that this boy's famous 
 father was a governor at fourteen, a general at six- 
 teen, a king at eighteen, a conqueror at twenty. If 
 this plan proposed by Antigonus were agreed to, 
 the usurper knew that his power could only last 
 until the son of Alexander grew strong enough to 
 rule over his father's mighty empire. 
 
 Such a result did not at all agree with Cassan- 
 der's ambitious schemes ; so one day a swift runner, 
 bearing a fearful message, came into Amphipolis. 
 " To the Captain Glaucus," his message ran ; and it 
 bade that officer make way with the young Alexan- 
 der and his mother as speedily and as secretly as 
 possible. 
 
 At once the dreadful deed was done. How, 
 when, and where, no one knows. It was as great 
 a tragedy and remains as great a mystery as was the 
 murder of the poor little princes of England in the 
 Tower of London, eighteen hundred years later.
 
 THE SON OF ALEXANDER. 31 
 
 Cassander, I am sorry to say, did not come to 
 grief, as he so richly deserved. He lived for fifteen 
 years after that bloody deed, and just revelled in 
 cruelty, conquest, and power. He became king of 
 Greece and Macedon, fought with all his old com- 
 rades and fellow conspirators, and made things 
 generally unpleasant. He is a type of the brutality 
 and selfishness that ruled the world in those bad 
 old days and yet he is said to have been a man 
 of cultivated taste and able to repeat all Homer 
 from memory. Learning alone, however, does not 
 make a gentleman. Nero was a poet and Richard 
 the Third was a scholar. Intellect that is unsup- 
 ported by nobility of soul is but a perishable fresco 
 that speedily rubs off and shows the rough and 
 blotchy plaster underneath. 
 
 Little Alexander's story is a sad one. But he 
 does not stand alone in this respect. It was the 
 rule with most of the royal boys and girls of long 
 ago to have sad stories of their own to tell. It was 
 their fate to be, very many of them, bones of con- 
 tention between those dogs of schemers, the 
 traitors and the brutes who so often lived near to 
 a throne and sharpened their ambitions on its very 
 steps. Cruelty seems to have been catching in 
 those days. 
 
 It marked Alexander the Little for its victim from 
 the start. He really appears never to have had
 
 32 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 a fair chance in life. Indeed, he started in the race 
 heavily handicapped, as the horsemen say. H is fath- 
 er, Alexander, was great ; there- 
 fore Alexander was feared ; 
 consequently he was hated ; 
 the power he left at his death 
 was a temptation to the 
 greedy and the ambitious ; 
 they schemed and quarrelled 
 and fought, and, in the scrim- 
 mage, poor little Alexander 
 was forgotten. Perhaps, if he 
 
 ALEXANDER THE LITTLE. ^ ^^ ^ ^ ^^ ^ ^ 
 
 if he had been properly brought up, he might have 
 developed into as great a man as had been his 
 father, and his father's father before him. 
 
 For both these men were mighty. Philip of 
 Macedon, little Alexander's grandfather, organized 
 conquest ; Alexander the Great, his marvellous son, 
 carried the scheme of Philip to success ; Alexander 
 the Little fell its victim. 
 
 Of course, it takes a genius to rise superior to 
 obstacles ; greatness comes in spite of hindrances. 
 Alexander the Little was no genius ; his father was. 
 I imagine if the great Alexander had lived, things 
 might have been different. He would have given 
 his boy a proper bringing up, for Alexander the 
 Great knew the value of education. His teacher
 
 A PUPIL OF EPAMINONDAS. 
 
 (Stained glass window by Lafarge in Memorial Hall, Harvard University^
 
 THE SON OF ALEXANDER. 35 
 
 had been the famous Greek philosopher Aristotle, 
 even as the tutor of his father Philip had been the 
 yet nobler Grecian Epaminondas an orator, a 
 soldier, a philosopher, and a statesman. 
 
 Boys who are bright and have such opportuni- 
 ties for education ought to bring out what is in 
 them. Philip and Alexander did. But our little 
 Alexander had none of these privileges, as a 
 foundation, while the women who brought him up 
 were well, what you girls would call " just 
 horrid." 
 
 In fact, the little fellow's chief obstacles seem to 
 have been his mother and grandmother. His 
 mother, Roxana, was a barbarian princess with 
 more beauty than brains ; his grandmother, Olym- 
 pias, was a fierce and ambitious woman with brains 
 enough, but with more desire to have her own way 
 than to make things easy for little Alexander. 
 His father and grandfather had the advantages of 
 Greek refinement and culture ; his mother and 
 grandmother knew only jealousy, hatred, and bloody 
 bickerings, and were not calculated to direct into 
 broad and noble channels the young life com- 
 mitted to their charge. Alexander the Great had 
 the advantage of his famous father's counsel and 
 guidance ; Alexander the Little never knew a 
 father's love or pride. Who then shall say what he 
 might not have become, had his father been per-
 
 36 GREA T MEN'S SONS. 
 
 mitted to shape his education, his training, and his 
 life? 
 
 So, you see, it all went wrong with the poor little 
 fellow from the start. To be sure he was scarcely 
 younger, when he was so cruelly murdered at 
 Amphipolis, than was his father when he rode at the 
 head of armies, or his grandfather when he fought 
 his way back from exile to power. But Alexander 
 the Little had neither the ability nor the will to 
 force success from fortune. He inherited neither 
 his father's push nor his grandfather's persistence ; 
 he was first the tool and then the victim of those 
 who made his life so miserable, and when he died, 
 he died. 
 
 Thus was the last of the great Alexander's race cut 
 off". For, with the death of this son of Alexander 
 all the mighty plans of the conqueror came to 
 naught. His short-lived empire was broken into 
 pieces ; the five generals made themselves kings ; 
 and, with many wars and much splitting up of 
 states, the Macedonians held sway in the East until 
 the growing power of Rome overshadowed them, 
 and the grasping hand of Rome gathered them, one 
 by one, into the folds of that mighty state which, 
 as republic and as empire, ruled the world for more 
 than a thousand years. 
 
 The name and fame of Alexander the Great 
 outlived even Roman power and sovereignty.
 
 THE SON OF ALEXANDER. 
 
 37 
 
 He stands in history as the world's greatest 
 conqueror and, in certain ways, as the world's 
 mightiest man. 
 
 But the father's fame never extended to the son. 
 A royal tramp throughout his earliest years, he 
 became the sad little prince, the unhappy boy 
 prisoner ; and, before he was thirteen, the son of 
 Alexander had gone through wandering and worry, 
 loss and misery, fear and persecution, to a secret 
 and tragical death. 
 
 The life that had begun in glory and glitter at 
 Babylon, tasted sorrow and privation at Pydna, and 
 went out in horror in the dungeons of that gloomy 
 citadel at Amphipolis. Even the might and glory of 
 the greatest monarch of the ancient world could not 
 cast enough of a shadow to shield or protect the 
 young life that should have been full of promise, 
 and might have been rich in performance.
 
 III. 
 
 THE SON OF CICERO. 
 
 (B.C. jfj 
 
 JUST tell me the rules in Latin, won't you, 
 father?" the boy said. "You have given 
 them to me in Greek, but that means twice think- 
 ing, you know ; so, if you 'd just as soon, I 'd 
 rather have them in Latin." 
 
 Up and down the pillared portico of a stately 
 country house, twelve miles from Rome, a father 
 and son were walking and talking. The house 
 was set well up on the slopes of what were known 
 as the Alban sometimes as the Latin Hills; 
 and, as they walked, the boy and his father could 
 look straight across the verdant campagna, or 
 Roman plain, dotted with farms and forests, to the 
 roofs and towers of Rome, or, farther still, to the 
 blue waters of the Mediterranean, sparkling in the 
 sun. 
 
 38
 
 THE SON OF CICERO. 39' 
 
 The father was tall, slender, refined, and 
 scholarly, full of gentle dignity and yet full of 
 animation as well ; and, as he talked, his eye lighted 
 with pleasure at the sound of his own voice and the 
 beauty of his well-rounded sentences for this was 
 a man who talked well, and always loved to hear 
 himself talk. The son was stout, sturdy, well- 
 built, and pleasing enough to look at, though his 
 face lacked the refinement and his form the grace 
 that made his father a leader among the cultured 
 Romans of his day. 
 
 The boy appeared interested in his father's flow- 
 ing talk as they paced the portico, side by side ; 
 but every now and then his eyes would look wist- 
 fully off toward Rome, and once or twice he would 
 lay his hands upon his lips as if he were having 
 hard work to keep back a yawn. For, if we read 
 the meagre records rightly, he was a lad who liked 
 the circus better than his father's study, and the 
 school of the sword-master and the boxer better 
 than that of the tutor and philosopher, and found 
 more entertainment in a tumbler's show in the 
 street than in all the well-rounded sentences of his 
 father's rules of speech. But he was a lively and 
 attractive young fellow of fourteen, and the apple 
 of his father's eye that father whom all Romans 
 honored in the days when Pompey and Caesar were 
 struggling for sovereign power. For the boy who
 
 4O GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 asked his father to "tell it in Latin," as they 
 walked up and down the noble portico of that fine 
 country house at Tusculum, was Marcus the son 
 of Cicero, Rome's foremost orator, statesman, 
 patriot, and writer in that year of Rome 702, or, as 
 we reckon time, 5 i before Christ. 
 
 All young Romans aspired to be orators. The 
 gift of public speaking led to popularity ; and 
 popularity was the road to the consulship the 
 highest office in the gift of the Roman people. 
 So young Marcus, walking with his father in the 
 portico, had asked some questions as to the rules 
 that governed oratory, much to his father's delight. 
 For Cicero had brought his son away from Rome, 
 because he thought the circus interfered too much 
 with the lad's studies. And Cicero did not like the 
 circus, nor the races and beast-baiting and gladia- 
 torial shows that made up so much of Roman life. 
 "To ransom captives and enrich the meaner folk 
 is a nobler form of generosity," he would say, 
 " than providing wild beasts or shows of gladiators 
 to amuse the mob." 
 
 So, when young Marcus asked him to "tell it in 
 Latin," his father replied : " There is nothing, my 
 dear boy, that I desire more than that you should 
 know as much as possible. And, as you know, I 
 would willingly postpone my most important occu- 
 pations in order to help you in your studies."
 
 THE SON OF CICERO. 4! 
 
 With questions from the son and with answers 
 from the father, the conversation grew into a long 
 and scholarly talk, which has come down to us 
 under its Latin title, De Partitione Oratoria, or, 
 On the Divisions of Speaking. And if you think 
 
 A TUMBLER'S SHOW IN THE STREETS OF ROME. 
 
 a healthy, hearty, fun-loving, fourteen-year old boy 
 would not get just a bit tired while following out 
 this long talk on oratory, instructive and interesting 
 though it might be to older heads, just hunt up the 
 "dialogues" and translate them for yourselves.
 
 42 GREA T MEN'S SONS. 
 
 Young Marcus Cicero lived in stirring days and 
 had an eventful life. He was born in the year 65 
 B.C., when his illustrious father was forty-three 
 years old and had already, for his great services to 
 the republic, been hailed and honored as " the 
 Father of his Country." 
 
 Marcus Tullius Cicero, the greatest Roman of 
 his day, save only the greater Caesar, was rich, 
 famous, and popular. He owned a splendid city 
 house on the fashionable Palatine Hill in Rome, 
 and he had no less than ten country houses, farms, 
 and villas scattered along the beautiful western 
 shores of Italy. His "dear daughter" Tullia was 
 his especial pet and pride ; but 
 Marcus was the only son of 
 his house, the one to whom 
 his name and the most of his 
 wealth would descend, and 
 the loving and ambitious fa- 
 ther gave his boy the best of 
 everything. Young Marcus 
 had private tutors, with whom 
 
 "DEAR DAUGHTER" he did not always get on well ; 
 TULLIA. he had horses and slaves and 
 
 followers and a pleasant and happy home and every- 
 thing a boy could wish for. His cousin Quintus was 
 brought up with him, and the two boys, although 
 they had to study hard, found plenty of time
 
 " YUUNG MARCUS CAUGHT THE WAR FEVER."
 
 THE SON OF CICERO. 45 
 
 almost too much, perhaps for the circus and the 
 baths and the sports and games that all young 
 Romans delighted to frequent and applaud. 
 
 Marcus loved and honored his noble father, even 
 though he was often headstrong and did not like 
 study and did like fun. He was proud of his 
 father, too, and apt to be just a trifle too conscious, 
 sometimes, of his position and opportunities as the 
 son of Rome's foremost citizen. 
 
 But the boy had known hard times. For, years 
 before, when Marcus was but seven years old, 
 Cicero had been outvoted by his rivals, and had 
 been exiled from Rome by his political enemies 
 "prohibited from fire and water," so the hostile 
 edict ran. This meant that no one within four 
 hundred miles of Rome could give the exile meat 
 or drink. His beautiful houses in Rome and on 
 the hillside at Tusculum were burned to the ground, 
 and his wife and children were forced to depend 
 upon faithful friends for shelter and succor. But, 
 before long, politics changed completely. Cicero's 
 relentless enemies were themselves overthrown, 
 and after fifteen months of exile, he returned to 
 his home, royally welcomed, and more popular than 
 ever. His houses were rebuilt, fortune smiled on 
 the family again ; and when, two years after this 
 glimpse we have of the boy and the father, young 
 Marcus, at sixteen, put on what was called the
 
 46 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 toga virilis, or manly cloak, in other words, when 
 he became of age, the name of Cicero was loved 
 and honored throughout the Roman world. 
 
 But no sooner was he a man for Roman boys 
 were " men " at sixteen than he caught the war 
 fever. Caesar and Pompey had plunged the nation 
 into civil war and men were taking sides. The 
 Ciceros were republicans and sided with Pompey ; 
 and, much against his father's wish, young Marcus 
 enlisted in Pompey's army, and was soon in Greece 
 as a young cavalry officer a calling for which his 
 training as a hard rider well fitted him. He served 
 with credit for a boy of sixteen, but the battle of 
 Pharsalia was Pompey's overthrow, and the Cicero 
 boys for Quintus the cousin was with Pompey 
 too were soon in Rome again. 
 
 The war was transferred to Spain, where Pompey's 
 sons took up their father's quarrel. But Caesar's 
 successes made him popular with the young 
 Romans, and all the boys wished to serve under 
 his banner. Among those restless ones was Marcus, 
 who, after a year's rest at home, came to his father 
 and made a cool request. " Give me," he said, 
 " either a house of my own in Rome or I will go 
 and fight under Caesar in Spain. 
 
 Instead of granting this headstrong request, 
 Cicero compromised by securing for this nineteen- 
 year old boy the office of cedile, or Commissioner of
 
 THE SON OF CICERO. 47 
 
 Public Works, in Arpinum, a town of southern 
 Italy and the birthplace of Cicero. But scarcely 
 was Marcus settled in his new office when a new 
 fancy seized him. He would go to college at 
 Athens, he declared, for a college education in 
 Greece was in his day the " fad " of young Romans 
 of wealth and refinement. 
 
 His father was, of course, delighted with this 
 proposition. So to Athens young Marcus went, 
 with five thousand dollars a year to spend as 
 his college allowance ; and he spent it all ! 
 
 Five thousand dollars a year seems a great sum 
 for a college allowance, does it not ? But this 
 young Cicero lived in a time of luxury, when the 
 sons learned extravagance from the fathers. A 
 boy whose father paid fifty thousand dollars for a 
 fancy centre-table might not think himself extrav- 
 agant in spending five thousand dollars a year at 
 college. 
 
 We must remember, too, that some things were 
 quite different in young Cicero's day and ours. 
 The young bloods of Rome the sons of her " four 
 hundred" we might call them went about with a 
 train of slaves and hangers-on, whom it took a 
 good deal of money to satisfy. Then young 
 Cicero, as we know, went oftener to the circus than 
 to lectures, and " cut " many a recitation, for the 
 sake of a horse-race, a ball-game, or a prize-fight.
 
 4 8 
 
 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 Does this sound too modern for a Roman story ? 
 It is true to the time. People fought over the 
 races in the circus ; every public bath had its ball- 
 courts, and the gladiatorial shows in the arena were 
 particularly brutal prize-fights. For athletics could 
 
 " YOUNG CICERO WENT OFTENER TO THE CIRCUS THAN TO LECTURES." 
 
 be abused in young Mark Cicero's day even as 
 they can in this age of contests both amateur and 
 professional. Every good thing can be abused, 
 no matter in what stage of the world's develop- 
 ment it finds place and popularity. 
 
 I am afraid we must admit that young Marcus
 
 THE SON OF CICERO. 49 
 
 Cicero was a spoiled child. His good father was 
 scarcely the stern Roman parent of whom we have 
 heard so much; he had high hopes for his boy, 
 and overdid things in trying to make life pleasant 
 for him. There have been other fathers besides 
 Cicero ; and boys who are spoiled by indulgence 
 rarely become men of mark. 
 
 Still, Cicero had ever his son's welfare in view. 
 He did all he could to make him sound, alike in 
 mind and body. It was while he was at college in 
 Athens that Cicero sent to young Marcus those 
 letters of advice on how to act and how to be a 
 man and a gentleman, that have been famous for 
 nineteen centuries. You read them, or will read 
 them, in school or college, under their Latin title 
 De Officiis, or Cicero's Offices. They are really 
 " points " as to the duties of young men who wish 
 to be men indeed, and they have been well termed 
 "the noblest present ever made by a parent to a 
 child." 
 
 Whether or not the father's noble precepts were 
 taken to heart by this boy, who was doing a little 
 too much " cutting up " at Athens, it is not possible 
 to say. Let us hope they were, for a letter may 
 still be read in which young Marcus said how sorry 
 he was he had not been doing well, and how he 
 really meant from that time on to do better and 
 make his mark as a student,
 
 50 GREA T MEN'S SONS. 
 
 But into this college career came the call to arms. 
 Caesar was murdered in Rome. Brutus and Cassius 
 were fighting Mark Antony ; and Marcus Cicero, 
 at once, enlisted under the banner of Brutus, the 
 dear friend of his father. 
 
 Again he made a fine record as a cavalry officer, 
 as a letter from Brutus to Cicero assures us ; while 
 the father's return letter to his son's general says : 
 "As to my son, if his merit be as great as you 
 write, I rejoice at it as much as I ought ; if you 
 magnify it, out of love to him, even that gives me 
 the greatest joy, to see that he is beloved by you." 
 
 But Cicero was never to see his son again. That 
 very year, 43 B.C., the old patriot fell a victim to 
 his patriotism, and was murdered by order of Mark 
 Antony while his son was fighting under the banner 
 of Brutus. The next year Brutus himself was de- 
 feated and killed in the battle of Philippi, and the 
 civil war and the republic were both ended. 
 
 After his father's death, young Marcus Cicero 
 drops out of history. We know that in the year 
 30 B.C. he served one term as consul with Octavius, 
 afterwards the Emperor Augustus, and that he died 
 as governor of Syria ; but in neither of these offices 
 did he reach either fame or reputation save as that 
 of the hardest drinker of his time. 
 
 This latter report, as it has come down to us, 
 may be untrue or overstated ; but the fact remains
 
 YOUNG MARK CICERO LEADING A CAVALRY CHARGE. 
 51
 
 THE SON OF CICERO. 53 
 
 that the boy who was so tenderly watched over and 
 so finely educated by his father, whose opportunities 
 were so many, and who lived at a time which was 
 one of the most notable of the world's great epochs, 
 instead of leaving the record that should have been 
 his as the son of Cicero, really " petered out," as 
 the saying is, and left no mark of merit or especial 
 honor by which men might recall his name, or 
 point to him with pride as truly the son of his 
 illustrious father. 
 
 And yet, let us make all the allowance and see 
 all the good that we can in this son of Cicero. 
 The opinions of people are often governed by their 
 personal likes or dislikes, and perhaps those who 
 said spiteful things of young Cicero did so because 
 he was not of their sort, their party, or their follow- 
 ing. We will admit that he was a trifle "fast" as 
 a young man ; but not many college boys can stand 
 the temptation of five thousand a year and their 
 own way. Even the story of his being the hardest 
 drinker in Rome is open to doubt. He took to 
 drinking, so we are assured, as many other men 
 have done of course, that showed a weakness 
 because of grief over his father's murder. He has 
 the record of having been a brave soldier ; a 
 fighter against Caesar's usurpations; a patriot, like 
 his father, until opposition became useless. 
 
 He accepted the change. The Emperor Augus*
 
 54 GKEA T MEN*S 
 
 tus honored him. He was repeatedly elected to 
 office ; he was made augur, Commissioner of the 
 Mint, consul, and governor of a province. A no- 
 account man could scarcely have reached to such 
 prominence. 
 
 Of course, we can explain this public advance- 
 ment by saying that young Marcus was honored 
 because he was the son of his father. In fact, 
 Seneca the philosopher said of him : "And what 
 made young Cicero consul, except his father ? " 
 
 Not that Seneca's fling is to be put down to his 
 credit. I am not sure that Seneca was the proper 
 person to pose as a successful " bringer-up " of 
 boys. He was Nero's tutor, you remember. 
 
 But, after all, it may not have been Seneca's 
 teaching so much as Nero's nature and surround- 
 ings that were at fault. And, as to young Marcus 
 Cicero, we are to remember that he was not the 
 only man in history or out of it who has been 
 pushed forward because of his father's position. I 
 am afraid, also, that, even had he been a marked 
 success as a man, his name and career would have 
 been overshadowed by the greatness of his father 
 in many respects one of the best and greatest 
 men of ancient times. 
 
 The great Cicero had his faults, however. 
 Though a patriot, he was not always immovable 
 in his patriotism ; and though noble, he was vain
 
 THE SON OF CICERO. 
 
 55 
 
 and sometimes insincere. But, in a time of brilliant 
 wickedness and bold treachery, he was eminently a 
 good man, a true citizen, a lover of his country and 
 of the world. He was an honest official, a just 
 governor, an affectionate father, a forgiving friend 
 the brightest intellect, the matchless orator, of 
 Rome's most cultured epoch. It is hard work for 
 a boy of moderate ability to live up to such a 
 record. 
 
 ONE OF THE AMUSEMENTS OF THE ROMANS A SEA FIGHT IN THE CIRCUS. 
 
 Do not misunderstand me, boys and girls. I do 
 not say a boy cannot live up to it. I simply say it is 
 a hard work to do so. But we must never refuse to
 
 56 GREA T MEN'S SONS. 
 
 follow our ideals because they seem too far beyond 
 our reach. Men and women are, after all, what they 
 make themselves ; not what their fathers make them. 
 Ideals are helps toward progress ; but a boy who 
 is true to the best that is in him, and who casts 
 aside as worthless, thoughts and desires that are 
 low or base or mean, is bound to get ahead and 
 achieve a position for himself in his community or 
 the world, no matter whether his father was a day- 
 laborer in New York, or the greatest orator of old 
 Rome. 
 
 But in no land is this more certain to be true 
 than in our splendid America of to-day. Remem- 
 ber this, boys and girls. Everything excellent is 
 possible to the young American. But, alike, the suc- 
 cesses and the failures of the past may be studied 
 as guides or warnings. So, whether we admit that 
 young Mark Cicero displayed any or none of the 
 abilities of his great father, we can at least agree in 
 the judgment that, had he improved all his oppor- 
 tunities and tried hard to pattern himself upon his 
 illustrious father, he would not, at least, have fallen 
 so far short of achievement as his story forces us to 
 admit that he did. It pays for all of us to do our 
 "level best."
 
 IV. 
 
 THE SON OF MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 (A.D. I75 .) 
 
 THE Men of the Marches were up in arms and 
 the great emperor had sent for his son. 
 What with war in Syria and war in Germany and 
 war along the Danube, this soldier, who never loved 
 war and who hated fighting, had his hands full of 
 that detestable business. 
 
 For nearly fourteen years had he, the Emperor 
 of Rome, been absent from the great city he loved ; 
 he had lived in the camp and the saddle, and mean- 
 while his boy had been growing up at Rome with 
 neither a father's counsels nor a father's watchful 
 care. True, the boy had been provided with tutors 
 and governors, with slaves and attendants, with 
 companions and advisers, but his was a headstrong 
 nature and a wilful temper, and those who served 
 him or sought to direct and guide him, had but a 
 sorry task, which they either performed with fear 
 
 57
 
 58 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 and trembling, or shirked altogether. So, being 
 now fifteen, and, according to Roman custom, 
 almost a man, the boy had come, in answer to his 
 father's summons, and under the charge of his gov- 
 ernor, Galen, the famous physician, to the fortified 
 camp of the Roman legionaries at Carnuntum, on 
 the Danube, a few miles east of the present city of 
 Vienna. 
 
 He was a beautiful boy. His marble bust, to be 
 seen in the Museum of the Louvre in Paris, shows 
 us this Roman prince of thirteen as a manly-looking 
 little fellow, full of promise, of expectancy, and of 
 grace. 
 
 Look at him, as he stands before his father, 
 dressed in the gilded trappings that he has just 
 put on the uniform of a Roman general. His 
 golden cuirass, embossed with the Roman eagles, 
 sets off his well-knit frame for this young fellow 
 has both the build and the training of a gladiator ; 
 the skirts of his purple-bordered tunic fall nearly 
 to his greave-defended knees ; the military mantle 
 hangs gracefully from his sturdy shoulders, and 
 from the light helmet that crowns his curly golden 
 hair to his low-laced boots and the eagle-tipped 
 baton in his hand, he looks the play-soldier, the 
 embodiment of patrician beauty, pride, and grace, 
 centred in a high-bred Roman boy. 
 
 Thus stood in his father's quarters at Carnuntum,
 
 THE EMPEROR COMMODUS AS "HERCULES." 
 
 (From the bust in the Capitol at Rome.)
 
 THE SON OF MARCUS A URELIUS. 6 1 
 
 that spring day in the year 175, the handsome 
 young Roman, called Prince of the Youth, known 
 in history as Commodus, the son of Marcus Aure- 
 lius, the scholar-king, and noblest of all the Roman 
 emperors. 
 
 But, though a picture to look at, this boy Com- 
 modus had already caused his kingly father deep 
 concern. He was then thirteen years old ; but only 
 the year before, because a careless servant had not 
 sufficiently heated his bath, he had ordered the 
 poor fellow flung into the furnace a fine perform- 
 ance for a thirteen-year-old boy ! 
 
 It was because he was so headstrong and over- 
 bearing that his gentle father summoned him to 
 the camp on the Danube, so that in the midst of 
 the daily duties and stern realities of a soldier's 
 life, the boy might be aroused to a sense of what 
 was expected of him as a soldier of Rome and the 
 great empire's future head. 
 
 There were ample opportunities to find these 
 duties and realities in the war with the brave and 
 persistent Marcomanni the " Men of the Marches," 
 or Danube borders. They lived in what is now Bo- 
 hemia, but even in the days of the Antonines they 
 so crowded Rome on the frontier that they seem, 
 really, to have been the vanguard of those so-called 
 " Barbarians " who in time overrun and overthrew 
 Imperial Rome,
 
 62 GREA T MEN'S SONS. 
 
 Just how much real fighting was done by young 
 Commodus in his glittering general's uniform I 
 cannot say ; he never was a real fighter if he could 
 help himself; he was a brawler, a stirrer-up of 
 trouble, a lover of hot water for other people ; but 
 he was never a brave and valiant soldier. Be this 
 as it may, the " Men of the Marches" were at last 
 forced into submission for a time, at least, and in 
 the summer of the year 1 76 the boy and his father 
 went back to Rome. 
 
 There, upon his fifteenth birthday, the 3ist of 
 August, Commodus, as we should say nowadays, 
 gave up wearing knickerbockers and put on long 
 trousers in other words, he assumed the toga virilis 
 or " manly mantle." This change of dress made a 
 man of him in the eyes of the people and the law ; 
 he was declared "free" or "of age," and was rec- 
 ognized as the assistant of his father in the govern- 
 ment of the great empire. 
 
 Honors in plenty had been showered upon this 
 Roman boy. At five he was proclaimed Caesar, or 
 "heir to the purple," at fourteen he was made a 
 member of what were called the " sacred colleges," 
 ajid named " Prince of the Youth " (a sort of RL^ 
 of Boys, this must have been) ; and after he ha - 
 put on the toga, or mantle, on his fifteenth birth- 
 day, he was made Tribune, and named as Consul 
 and Imperator,
 
 THE SOAT OF MARCUS AURELIUS. 63 
 
 On top of all these honors the Roman Senate 
 decreed that the boy and his father should have 
 what was called a " triumph "-a great processional 
 display because of their victory over the " Men of 
 the Marches." And, if the young prince was proud 
 and " stuck up " before, what must he have been 
 after this great street show given in his honor on 
 the twenty-third day of December in the year 176 ? 
 
 It was, indeed, enough to turn any boy's head. 
 Through the Triumphal Gate and down the sacred 
 street, with the armed police clearing the way, 
 came the glittering procession the magistrates and 
 senators of Rome, marching two by two, the 
 trumpeters, the long string of wagons filled with 
 booty, the trophies captured from the enemy, the 
 flute-players with the priests and the sacrificial 
 white oxen, the line of captives, the lictors in single 
 file, and then, the emperors ! 
 
 In a gilded chariot drawn by four prancing 
 horses stood the Imperial father and son, the 
 Augusti, the Antonines, the Emperors of Rome. 
 Their tunics were of flowered silk, their mantles 
 were gold-embroidered, upon their bared heads 
 rested the laurel wreaths of victory, and, in their 
 hands they held, each, the kingly sceptre and the 
 victor's bough of laurel. 
 
 With cheer and shout the thronging people 
 hailed the emperors as gods, as the long proces-
 
 64 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 sion, closed by a brilliant calvacade of Roman 
 knights and rank upon rank of the victorious 
 legions bearing laurel-encircled spears, clattered 
 along the sacred street to offer sacrifices to the 
 great Jupiter of the Capitol in honor of the 
 victory. 
 
 It was a proud day for the father ; and yet he 
 was full of anxiety for his boy, fearing lest all this 
 praise and pomp and flattery should hinder rather 
 than help him. It was a proud day for the son ; 
 but he thought only of his own importance and 
 was full of plans as to what he would do when he 
 alone was the Emperor ! For Marcus Aurelius, 
 though scarcely fifty-six, looked, already, like an 
 old man, while his son was full of life and vigor, of 
 strength and hope. 
 
 The next year the young Commodus was mar- 
 ried. This was the occasion for another brilliant 
 display, with shows and games to please the shout- 
 ing people. Then the Barbarians along the 
 Danube again broke out in war. Once more the 
 legions marched out of Rome ; and the father and 
 son, dressed in their war-gear, stood before the 
 temple of the goddess of war and hurled against its 
 door a bloody spear, thereby declaring war against 
 the Barbarians. l 
 
 For two years they fought along the Danube, 
 
 1 See frontispiece.
 
 THE SON OF MARCUS AURELIUS. 6j 
 
 Then, one sad day in March in the year 180, Mar- 
 cus Aurelius died at Vindobona, now Vienna. 
 Commodus, at nineteen, was master of the Roman 
 world. 
 
 But before Marcus Aurelius died, the thought of 
 his son as his successor, and his knowledge of the 
 boy's wayward and uncertain nature, weighed 
 heavily on the good emperor. Calling about him 
 his friends and advisers, he told them that now they 
 had the opportunity to prove the gratitude and 
 love they had so often expressed in words. " Here," 
 he said, "you see my son, whom you yourselves 
 have educated, just reaching the age of manhood, 
 and, like a ship in the midst of storms and surging 
 waves, in need of pilots. My fear is that inexperi- 
 ence may prove his ruin. Show yourselves toward 
 him as many fathers, in place of me. Take care of 
 him, and give him counsel. For store of riches are 
 of no avail to a tyrant who is destitute of power ; 
 and no body-guard is sufficient to protect a ruler 
 who does not possess the affections of his subjects 
 To which he added other words of wis- 
 dom and direction, and then said : " Impress these 
 thoughts upon my son ; recall them often to his 
 remembrance ; make your ruler a glory to your- 
 selves and all the world. Thus will you perform 
 the greatest honor to my memory. Thus, only, 
 can you make my name immortal,"
 
 68 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 I wish I could say that these pleadings of a 
 noble father were of avail. But they were not. 
 Neither these words of warning, nor those remarka- 
 ble Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius 
 Antoninus, which he left in manuscript especially for 
 the benefit of his son, and which for years have 
 made his name revered and honored as a great 
 teacher, had any effect on this boy, who at nineteen 
 became master of the world. 
 
 As if the death of his father were a relief from 
 restraint, Commodus hurried up a disgraceful peace 
 with the warlike " Men of the Marches " and has- 
 tened to Rome where, for twelve years, he lived a 
 life of selfishness, pleasure, tyranny, cruelty, and 
 crime that can neither be explained nor excused 
 unless we say, as do some historians, that Commo- 
 dus was crazy. 
 
 He was as great a tyrant as his father had been 
 noble, as wicked as his father had been good, as 
 small as his father had been great. His only claim 
 to remembrance, indeed, is that he was about the 
 worst of the Roman emperors ; and when he was 
 murdered, in the year 180, no one was sorry. 
 
 It is hard to account for Commodus. But all 
 things must be accounted for. He was certainly 
 everything his father was not. Marcus Aurelius 
 came very near to being a saint Commodus was 
 the meanest kind of a sinner ; Marcus Aurelius
 
 THE SON' OF MARCUS AURELIUS. J\ 
 
 was a philosopher Commodus was a clown ; Mar- 
 cus Aurelius despised brutal festivals Commodus 
 almost lived in the circus ; Marcus Aurelius was a 
 peace-lover Commodus was a butcher ; Marcus 
 
 RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF ANTONINUS AND FAUSTINA IN ROME. 
 
 Aurelius was absolutely unselfish Commodus 
 made a hog seem a gentleman ; Marcus Aurelius 
 was a teacher enthroned Commodus was simply a 
 crowned gladiator.
 
 ^2 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 And yet Marcus Aurelius persecuted the 
 Christians, and Commodus protected them ! His- 
 tory is odd enough in its conundrums, is it not ? 
 
 One would think that Marcus Aurelius with all 
 his knowledge of the world and his desire to do 
 just the right thing for his fellow-men would have 
 recognized the absolute unfitness of Commodus for 
 kingship, and have named some one else as his 
 successor. It was his right to do so, and he cer- 
 tainly had, what are called precedents. Other 
 Roman emperors, before his day, had picked out 
 and named their own successors. 
 
 The natural love of the father, however, seems 
 to have overborne the foresight of the ruler, and 
 Commodus succeeded his father on the throne. 
 What a wreck he made of his opportunities, I have 
 endeavored to show you. 
 
 Neither must we unload the responsibility for 
 the utter badness of this boy Commodus upon his 
 mother, though that has been one of the pet 
 theories of history. 
 
 For, as careful students of the past now assure 
 us, the Empress Faustina, the wife of Marcus Au- 
 relius and the mother of Commodus, has been the 
 victim of a spiteful misrepresentation for fully sev- 
 enteen centuries. Gossip and slander and misun- 
 derstanding have blackened her memory and her 
 name. It has even been claimed by her detractors
 
 THE SON OF MARCUS AURELIUS. 73 
 
 that she poisoned her husband. The latest word 
 about her, however, "begs the question," and de- 
 cides that she was either the worst or the most ma- 
 ligned of women. One historian declares her to have 
 been the victim of the jealous tongues of certain so- 
 called scholars, who bored her so dreadfully that at 
 last she did not care whether they knew it or not. 
 She showed this plainly, and they took revenge 
 upon her with their pens. I am quite sure that Mar- 
 cus Aurelius would never have said all the beautiful 
 things about her that he did, nor have done all the 
 splendid things he did in her memory, after she died 
 at his side among his soldiers, had he known her to 
 be a wicked woman. He would not be likely to, I 
 know; he never lied. Men called him the Truth- 
 teller. 
 
 And yet and yet and yet we come back to 
 the question : How shall we account for Corn- 
 modus ? 
 
 It is not enough to say, the father was good, the 
 boy was bad, and dismiss the case thus. The life 
 of Commodus is, to a certain extent, a commentary 
 on his times. He was really not much worse than 
 the men he ruled over. He was what he was 
 because the times were what they were. 
 
 But this is only a general sort of an explanation. 
 The simple truth appears to be that Commodus 
 was a boy of weak nature and excessive egotism,
 
 74 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 spoiled by flattery and ruined by false friends. He 
 never really had a home ; for nearly half his boy- 
 hood his father and mother were away from him in 
 the camps and frontier towns of the great empire. 
 Those who should have disciplined him let him 
 have his own way, and thought more of flattering 
 the prince than of schooling the boy. At nineteen 
 the world was his. Unlimited power came into 
 his hands. The weakness and foolishness of his 
 nature got the upper hand. The parasites who 
 hung upon him, puffed him up with pride and 
 gratified his slightest whim. The low tastes that 
 he developed, his love of making a show of him- 
 self, the conclusion that it was stupid to be good, 
 and that virtue did n't pay, these all combined to 
 steer him in the wrong direction, and to make a 
 boy who might have been disciplined into decency, 
 a base, brutal, and vindictive tyrant, who was a 
 craven because he was a coward, and a nuisance 
 because he was a fool. At last, he caught 
 what is known as the blood-madness of despots, 
 and became simply a crazy clown who knew neither 
 love, respect, justice, nor right a blot on history, 
 and a disgrace to mankind. 
 
 I am willing to make all due allowance even for 
 so disgraceful a specimen of the human race, and set 
 down part of the blame against the times in which 
 he lived. Both he and they were, as Shakspere
 
 THE SON OF MARCUS A U RE LI US. ?$ 
 
 tells us, "out of joint." Commodus was the crea- 
 ture of his time. The Roman Empire of his day 
 was bad, false, rotten, slowly going to decay. 
 Marcus Aurelius was simply out of place. He 
 belonged rather to the day of Brutus and of Cato 
 than to the Rome of the second century. He tried 
 
 O.SE OF THE P.HLA3UKES OF COMMoDUs A GLAJJiAToHlAL COMBAT IN THE ClKCL'i. 
 
 his best to elevate the Roman world, but it had 
 fallen too low to be elevated. Nothing under 
 God's grace could save it but Christianity, and it 
 had to get lower yet before Christianity began its 
 slow and bitter redemption. We can't excuse any 
 boy or girl who turns out badly by saying they
 
 76 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 could n't help themselves. They can. Each one 
 of us has goodness enough stowed away some- 
 where to build a noble life upon. If we fail 
 to find that goodness and build upon it, the fault 
 is that of no one but ourselves. I am willing 
 to take into account surroundings and example and 
 the way a fellow is brought up. And yet, I feel 
 bound to say that if we make shipwreck of our 
 lives I don't see that we have any one but ourselves 
 to blame. For, even in the worst of times, the 
 brightest lives have bloomed into gracious and 
 saint-like personalities. 
 
 So the story of Commodus ends badly. It is 
 not only a bad but a sad ending to a story that 
 might have turned out all right. It is but another 
 instance of the singular fact that, sometimes, the 
 best of fathers have the worst of sons. Much was 
 to be expected of the son of Marcus Aurelius 
 Antoninus ; but he was a terrible disappointment. 
 An ungovernable boy is always spoiled by prosper- 
 ity. If he had been obliged to go through trouble 
 and hard times he might have turned out better. 
 Adversity is said to be an excellent teacher ; but 
 among all the tutors and instructors of Commodus 
 of Rome this was about the only teacher to whom 
 he never did go to school. It would have been 
 better for him and for the world if he had.
 
 V. 
 
 THE SON OF CONSTANTINE. 
 (A.D. 330.) 
 
 THE Emperor Constantine, called the Victori- 
 ous, the Great, the August, determined to 
 erect to himself a monument that should be eternal. 
 So, upon the seven hills of the Golden Horn, from 
 whose heights he could look upon both Europe 
 and Asia, Constantine built a city, whose name has 
 stood for centuries as his monument, though the 
 city was long since lost by his successors. 
 
 Lance in hand, the great Emperor walked over 
 the hills tracing out the limits of his new city. And 
 when those who followed him, wearied with the 
 walk, asked how far he would advance, the emperor 
 replied, " Until He who leads me stops." 
 
 Thus arose Constantinople. So busily did its 
 imperial builder work, that in four years' time the 
 new city was built. And when, on the eleventh 
 
 77
 
 78 GREAT MEN'S SONS, 
 
 day of May, in the year 330, the splendid capital, 
 with its palaces and porticoed forum, with its 
 churches instead of pagan temples (for its builder 
 was the first Christian Emperor of Rome), with its 
 baths and fountains and great hippodrome or cir- 
 cus, was dedicated to God and the Empire, Con- 
 stantine called his three sons to take part with 
 him in the ceremonies that announced the comple- 
 tion of the royal city. 
 
 These three sons of Constantine were as differ- 
 ent in character as in age. The eldest, Flavius 
 Claudius Constantinus, was fourteen years old, and 
 rather slow and stupid ; the second, Flavius Julius 
 Constantius, was thirteen, and pushing and con- 
 ceited ; the youngest, Flavius Julius Constans, was 
 ten, and blunt and touchy. 
 
 These three Flavian boys, as you see by the 
 " Flavius " in each of their names, belonged with 
 their father, the great Constantine, to the Flavian 
 family. The second of these boys, known to 
 history as Constantius was his father's favorite. 
 He lived the longest of the three, and came the 
 nearest to his father in ability ; so it is of Constan- 
 tius that I elect to tell you, as I endeavor to put 
 on record the story of the son of Constantine. 
 
 These three brothers never loved each other 
 very much, but they were selfish enough to work 
 together when it was their interest to do so. They
 
 THE TRAINING OF THE SON OF CONSTANTINE A BOAR FIGHT IN THE 
 
 FORESTS OF SIRMIUM. 
 79
 
 THE SON OF CONSTANTINE. 8 1 
 
 appear to have lived in different parts of the great 
 Empire, and to have had, even as boys, their 
 separate courts, attendants, surroundings, and 
 education. 
 
 The boy Constantius was born on the sixth of 
 August, in the year 317, in the city of Sirmium, 
 now the Austrian town of Metrovitz, on the river 
 Save, near where it flows into the Danube. His 
 father had been seven years Emperor of Rome 
 when the boy was born, and the name and power 
 of Constantine were supreme throughout the 
 length and breadth of the great Empire, from Scot- 
 land to Syria, and from the Nile to the Danube 
 and the Rhine. 
 
 The boy was brought up in the castle-palace at 
 Sirmium, and his father provided for him teachers 
 in every branch of instruction, both for the body 
 and the mind. Like his elder brother, he was dull 
 of brain, but, unlike him, he had ambition and 
 determination. As a student he was what the 
 school-boys nowadays call a " dig," but he had lit- 
 tle fancy and less wit, and if he were in your class 
 at school he would hold his place not by his bril- 
 liancy but by what we might call his " stick-to- 
 it-iveness." But he seems to have been a good 
 "all-round" athlete, for in all out-of-door sports 
 and exercises he had a fine record ; he grew up to 
 be a sinewy gymnast, a notable archer, a daring
 
 82 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 horseman and a skilful handler of all the war 
 weapons of his day. 
 
 He was not agreeable either as boy or man ; but 
 it was his persistency and his push that carried him 
 through all the obstacles that jealousy and civil 
 strife threw in his path, and made him at last head 
 and master of the Roman world. 
 
 On the twenty-second of May, in the year 337, 
 Constantine the Great died, and was buried in the 
 new Church of the Holy Apostles which he had 
 built at Constantinople. He was neither agreeable 
 to live with nor pleasant to know ; and yet, not be- 
 cause of what he was, but of what he did, he has 
 been rightfully placed among the world's great 
 men. 
 
 Constantius was twenty years old when his 
 father died. He was fighting the Persians in Asia, 
 and when the news reached him, he came leisurely 
 back to Constantinople, planning as he came, how 
 he might get the best of his brothers. 
 
 But before he could put into operation any of 
 his plans against them there were other obstacles 
 to be removed. The sons of Constantine must 
 rule alone ; they could not risk the possibility of 
 any uncle or cousin seeking to divide their great 
 realm with them. So their first act was a deed of 
 blood, from which not even the excuse that all 
 kings acted in that way in those bad old days takes
 
 THE TRAGEDY AT SIRMIUM.
 
 THE SCAT OF CONSTANTINE. 85 
 
 away the exceptional cruelty and treachery. The 
 brothers promised their relations protection and 
 love, got them together in the palace at Constan- 
 tinople, and then murdered them all, two uncles, 
 seven cousins, and two brothers-in-law. Only a 
 sickly boy of twelve and a little fellow of six were 
 spared ; and it is curious to remember that this 
 boy of six, when he grew to manhood, became first 
 the assistant and then the conqueror of his em- 
 peror-cousin, and ruled as one of the " good 
 emperors " of Rome the Emperor Julian. 
 
 When this dreadful crime had been accom- 
 plished and history gives all the credit of the 
 treacherous deed to the crafty and quiet Constan- 
 tius the three sons of Constantine met in the 
 palace of Constantius at Sirmium and there divided 
 between them their father's mighty empire. But 
 Constantius, always looking out for Number One, 
 proved again the smartest of the three boys, and 
 got the lion's share, as usual. 
 
 As I have already told you, the three brothers 
 did not love each other very much, and, before 
 long, they fell to quarrelling. They were all " Chris- 
 tians," though of a rather peculiar kind ; but they 
 quarrelled about their faith for each one held to a 
 different belief, and followed opposing priests or 
 teachers ; they quarrelled about their land, and kept 
 crowding into each other's territory ; and altogether
 
 86 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 they lived in anything but brotherly love. But 
 Constantius was smart enough and shrewd enough 
 to leave the real fighting to his two brothers. 
 They kept at it until, first, Constantinus the elder 
 and then Constans the younger were killed off the 
 first surprised in an ambush, the second murdered 
 by a rebel. Then, with all his rivals and all his 
 enemies out of his way, the crafty Constantius be- 
 came, in the year 350, just what he had been work- 
 ing for since his father's death the only living son 
 of Constantine and sole Emperor of Rome. 
 
 He was a peculiar and by no means an agreeable 
 man. Constantine the father had many faults, but 
 he was great in ability and in action ; Constantius 
 the son was great in nothing but conceit, and small 
 in every virtue in which he might have patterned 
 after, even if he could not have equalled, his famous 
 father. He was a bow-legged little fellow, full of 
 all the ridiculous affectations in which so many little 
 men who claim to be great indulge. He knew 
 that he was wanting in his father's brilliant gifts, and 
 so he was cunning enough for he was a shrewd 
 one ! to hide his youth and inexperience and lack 
 of knowledge under an air of dignity which fooled 
 many people into believing that he really was a 
 great man. He would sit motionless for hours, as 
 if to make folks think he was in deep thought over 
 grave matters. He prete-nded to know a great
 
 THE SON OF CONSTANTINE. 9 
 
 deal, and loved to make long and stupid speeches 
 to his courtiers, to show them how eloquent he 
 could be. If a man did him a good turn he at 
 once grew suspicious, and he was jealous of who- 
 ever served the empire successfully in war or peace. 
 He made a pretence of being very religious, be- 
 cause in his time Christianity had been made the 
 state religion ; he was, however, anything but a 
 follower of the gentle Jesus, whose cross had re- 
 placed the eagles of Rome on the standards and 
 banners of the empire ever since the day, forty 
 years before, when the great Constantine saw (or 
 said he saw) in the midnight sky, the wonderful 
 vision of a flaming cross, and read the startling 
 command : " In this conquer ! " In fact, this weak 
 and crafty son of Constantine was much like the 
 man described by the poet Dryden : 
 
 " Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, 
 Was everything by starts and nothing long." 
 
 In the year 357 he made a grand visit to Rome. 
 In that old capital of the empire no emperor had 
 been seen for over thirty years. The displays and 
 shows that occupied the most of his thirty days in 
 Rome were so brilliant and attracted such crowds 
 that even the inordinate vanity of this stupidly vain 
 emperor was satisfied, and he declared that all the 
 world had come to see and honor him. This visit
 
 gO GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 to Rome is of interest to the American boys and 
 girls of to-day because, as a memorial of it, Con- 
 stantius transported to Rome from its temporary 
 home in Alexandria one of those Egyptian obelisks, 
 wrongfully known as "Cleopatra's needles," the 
 mate to which was, in 1880, transported from Alex- 
 andria to New York, and set up in the Central 
 Park. 
 
 This dull but despotic son of Constantine ruled 
 the Roman Empire for twenty-five years, and died 
 in the year 361 at the age of forty-five. At the 
 time of his death he was marching westward to 
 fight his brave and plucky young cousin Julian, 
 whom he had made his associate in the business of 
 ruling the empire, and had then nagged and 
 worried into rebellion. His sudden death saved 
 Rome from civil war, for Julian was at once hailed 
 as emperor, and Constantius was speedily for- 
 gotten. 
 
 It is a pity that thus far in our study of these 
 sons of great men, every son of his father has 
 proved as small as his father had been great. I 
 am not sure, for instance, that this highly objec- 
 tionable Constantius was not as low down in the 
 scale of manliness as possible. Even that boy- 
 monster of a Commodus had more of what is called 
 " snap." Let us see if we can explain or mitigate 
 any of his evil strain.
 
 THE SON OF CONSTANTINE. 1 
 
 I suspect, as you read the old histories and grow 
 better acquainted with the men and manners of the 
 olden time, you will come to the conclusion that 
 men in power feared their own kin even more than 
 their foreign foes. Whenever one of them had a 
 son that seemed, as you boys say, "worth his 
 salt," he went to work to kill him off. That, at 
 least, seems to have been what Constantine did 
 he whom the world calls the Great, and reveres as 
 the first Christian emperor. The only brilliant son 
 he had was Crispus, half-brother to this sneak of a 
 Constantius. He was the eldest son of Constan- 
 tine, and should have been his heir. But, to judge 
 from the record, just as soon as he had shown him- 
 self brave and brainy and good for something, 
 Constantine feared that he would become too 
 popular, and put an end to him. I imagine you 
 will say, as did one American boy to whom I told 
 this story : " Thank you, I prefer my own father, 
 even if he is just an ordinary, every-day American." 
 
 As to the mother of Constantius, stories differ, 
 as they often do. Certainly we must believe that 
 the household of the great Constantine was not by 
 any means a " happy family." Fausta, the mother 
 of Constantius, proved herself a good and helpful 
 wife to his mighty father. She was as loyal and 
 upright and affectionate as it was possible to be 
 in so jealous and divided a home. When she
 
 2 GREA T MEN'S SONS. 
 
 heard that her step-son Crispus was plotting treason 
 against the emperor his father, of course she be- 
 lieved it. No one thought of doubting such 
 charges in those days ; so, without stopping to in- 
 vestigate, she accused him ; and Constantine, as 
 promptly, had the young man killed. Thereupon 
 Helena, the mother of Constantine, who did not 
 love her daughter-in-law, and did love Prince 
 Crispus far better than the sons of Empress 
 Fausta, started in to make things as unpleasant as 
 she could for Fausta. History assures us that 
 Helena, the mother of Constantine, was a vigorous 
 and very determined old lady, who never gave up 
 what she set out to do whether it was to revenge 
 herself on a rival or find the true cross of the gentle 
 Christ, whose precepts she and her family preached 
 but did not practise. So you may be sure that she 
 succeeded in this quarrel with her daughter-in-law. 
 She worked upon Constantine, her son, so persist- 
 ently, that at last he gave up his scruples and 
 ordered the murder of Fausta the empress, who 
 had been his faithful wife for twenty years. 
 Thus, as Shakspere says, 
 
 " bad begins, 
 But worse remains behind." 
 
 I will not go into these " worse " details however. 
 They have no immediate bearing on our present
 
 THE SON OF CONSTANTINE. 93 
 
 story, and they are not pleasant reading. Indeed, 
 one is led to agree with good Mr. Boffin, in 
 Dickens's story of Our Mutual Friend. You 
 remember, perhaps, that when Mr. Wegg, "with a 
 wooden leg," had finished his first night's reading 
 of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 
 Mr. Boffin mopped his head as he had a way of 
 doing when he was worried or disturbed ; " Wegg 
 takes it easy," he said, "but to an old bird like 
 myself these are Scarers ! I did n't think this 
 morning there was half so many Scarers in Print." 
 
 Mr. Boffin was quite right. The story of Rome's 
 degradation and decline is full of "scarers"; and 
 not the least of these are the deeds of cruelty and 
 perfidy that stain the records of the first Christian 
 emperors. 
 
 And, just here, a line from another great writer 
 comes in as a side-light. That deep thinker, John 
 Stuart Mill, wrote: "It is one of the most tragi- 
 cal facts of all history that Constantine rather than 
 Marcus Aurelius was the first Christian Emperor. 
 It is a bitter thought how different the Christianity 
 of the world might have been, had it been adopted 
 under the auspices of Marcus Aurelius instead of 
 those of Constantine." 
 
 Most of us might feel prompted to make the 
 same remark as we read the history of the world. 
 But there is this to be said : Constantine was an
 
 94 GREA T MEN'S SONS. 
 
 organizer; Marcus Aurelius was not. It needed 
 the mind of a Constantine rather than of a Marcus 
 Aurelius to set the world aright in the track of 
 progress, in the day when Roman civilization was 
 running so rapidly to seed. 
 
 So when we come to "size up" Constantine, as 
 the saying is, I imagine that we must separate the 
 man from the monarch. For the world looks more 
 at what a man has done than at what he was. As 
 a man, Constantine scarcely deserved the title of 
 "the great." His family life was dreadful. He 
 was a poor husband, a bad father, and a worse 
 uncle. Masterful as a young man, he became 
 tyrannical as he grew old. As you boys might say 
 of him, he could pray with one hand and stab with 
 the other. But here again the times in which he 
 lived must stand in some measure as a key to his 
 character. To-day we do not think of the big, red- 
 faced, thick-necked, yellow-wigged, piercing-eyed, 
 flashily dressed man of fifty, with a helmet always 
 on his head, and a spear always in his hand. We 
 forget his despotism, his cruelty, his arrogance, and 
 his suspicion. We remember only what the world 
 owes him. We recall only his fearlessness, his 
 wisdom, his foresight, his leadership, his tolerance, 
 his statesmanship, his sagacity, and see in him the 
 founder of the system of government from which 
 our own security and safety sprang, the intelligent
 
 THE SON OF COiVSTANTINE. 95 
 
 leader of men, who directed the changing thought 
 of the world out of the chaos of paganism into the 
 upbuilding force of Christianity. For this reason 
 is he Constantine the Great a man, as Dean 
 Stanley says, " not to be imitated or admired, 
 but much to be remembered, and deeply to be 
 studied." 
 
 As for his son Constantius, perhaps those of you 
 who believe in the worth of athletics, and think 
 that they result in placing a sound mind in a sound 
 body, will assert that he cannot have been so poor 
 a specimen of a man as I have pictured him. Let 
 us see if we can find any good traits about him. 
 He was a first-class athlete, and a fairly good soldier. 
 I know a boy who claims that Constantius was a 
 dutiful son, because, when he found that his father 
 had left a paper bidding him kill off his uncles and 
 cousins, he obeyed him and did so. Well, per- 
 haps that was obedience ; but it is hardly a thing 
 to be proud of. Constantius, too, we are told, 
 spared his rival, Vetranio, whom some of the mal- 
 contents set up as emperor. But that was the 
 shrewd policy of the crafty Constantius. Vetranio 
 was an incapable old man, the tool and catspaw of 
 others, and to entrap those others Constantius 
 found him of more service living than dead, and 
 therefore posed as "the merciful emperor." 
 
 We are assured, also, by those who wish to say
 
 96 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 a good word for Constantius, that he was a lover 
 of peace ; that he was a moral man when goodness 
 was not in fashion ; sober, when drunkenness was 
 counted a virtue ; an excellent scholar, and the 
 friend of scholars. 
 
 This may all be so, but the list of virtues is small 
 and poverty-stricken when, against them, we must 
 set down the fact that this young Constantius was 
 as superstitious as he was pedantic ; as suspicious 
 as he was rapacious ; as artificial as he was coward- 
 ly ; as cruel as he was heartless ; and as crafty as 
 he was sordid, mean, and base. 
 
 No, I am afraid we cannot make out any sort of 
 a case in favor of this unlovely emperor. The 
 times, I know, were bad ; the hearts of men were 
 cruel, and power made them ruthless, odious, 
 covetous, and faithless. But that is not a sufficient 
 excuse. Power is given us to use for the uplifting 
 of man ; godliness should never be a cloak for 
 vice, and no man, be he emperor or slave, president 
 or coal heaver, can ever afford to play the bully. 
 Constantine was great because he worked for great 
 ends ; Constantius was little because he worked 
 only for himself. The selfishness that looks out 
 for Number One never backs up a man in the 
 noblest of all fights self-conquest ; it never helps 
 the world along, and never leaves a name for man- 
 kind to admire, remember, or honor.
 
 THE SON OF CONSTANTINE. gj 
 
 I wish the story of Flavius Julius Constantius 
 had turned out better. He had a great name and 
 he should have made a great success of his life. 
 But, alas ! he did not. His life was a failure. With 
 great opportunities, but without ability to use these 
 opportunities either for the glory of the empire or 
 the good of his fellow-men, this son of Constantine 
 was unable to uphold his father's greatness or his 
 father's fame. As a Christian emperor he might 
 have made Rome an example to the world as a 
 glorious and tolerant Christian nation. Instead, 
 he was a bigot, and selfish ; unlike his father, whose 
 ideas were vast and whose plans were wise, he was 
 petty, small, and mean. He lives in history under 
 the bloody title of " the man-hunter of his race," 
 and he is dismissed from the world's story with the 
 remark that " he inherited the defects without the 
 abilities of his father." Perhaps, after all, it was 
 well for the world that in him died the last of the 
 Constantines.
 
 VI. 
 
 THE SON OF MAHOMET. 
 (A.D. 6 3 o.) 
 
 UPON all the land of Arabia lay the hand of 
 the " Prophet of God," Mohammed, the 
 son of Abdallah. The camel-driver had become a 
 king ; the shepherd-boy the mightiest of the mighty. 
 He who had been jeered at as the crazy man of 
 Mount Hira, who had been stoned away from the 
 gates of Taif, and had fled for his life from his own 
 home town of Mecca, was now, after twenty years 
 of struggle, of persecution, and of perseverance, 
 Master of his homeland, Lawgiver of Arabia, the 
 acknowledged Prophet of the one and only God. 
 Kings sought his friendship, chieftains accepted 
 him as leader, thousands upon thousands of devoted 
 followers adored him, reverenced him, died for him. 
 His story is, indeed, one of the most wonderful of 
 all the romances of history. 
 
 9 8
 
 THE SON OF MAHOMET. 99 
 
 It was the year 630 A.D. Mecca, the city of his 
 youth, the city that had derided, persecuted, exiled, 
 and fought him, had, on the first day of January, 
 opened its gates to Mohammed or Mahomet, as 
 his name is popularly rendered as its conqueror, 
 its master, and its lord. And the wise prophet, 
 instead of steeping his conquest in blood, after the 
 fashion of those bloody days, had forgiven the 
 people of Mecca the slights, the insults, and the 
 outrages they had put upon him and his followers, 
 and, by his gentleness and magnanimity in the hour 
 of triumph, had made the men of Mecca converts 
 to his faith and defenders of his banner. 
 
 But dearer to his heart than conquest and victory, 
 dearer even than his acceptance by this very city 
 of Mecca he had striven so long and determinedly 
 to possess, was the knowledge that, at his home in 
 Medina, two hundred and fifty miles to the north, 
 the " faithful city " that had believed in and ac- 
 cepted him when all others refused and repelled 
 him, was the little boy who was to take up the 
 work when he should lay it down, who should by 
 voice and sword spread the knowledge of the one 
 and only God north and south, east and west, until 
 all lands and all peoples should accept the truth and 
 repeat the simple creed : There is no God but God, 
 and Mohammed is his prophet ! 
 
 So ? when the triumph at Mecca was complete ;
 
 100 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 when, in the valley of Honain the last rebel had 
 been defeated and subdued ; when, within the sa- 
 cred temple of the Kaaba, before the black stone 
 that fell from heaven, three hundred and sixty 
 idols, including the great red agate god himself, 
 had been hewed and hacked into pieces ; when, 
 over all the conquered places, the Moslem banner 
 of green and gold, consecrated by the prophet him- 
 self, floated unchallenged and triumphant then 
 Mohammed (the " one who is praised," his name 
 means), the conqueror, lawgiver, and king, returned 
 to his humble home at Medina, threw aside his 
 honors and his absorbing thoughts, and played 
 with his baby boy as freely and as joyfully as if he 
 had no great cares upon his mind, no mighty plans 
 in his brain, nor, in his heart, one overpowering 
 desire for the conversion and uplifting of the 
 world. 
 
 Upon the spot where El-Kaswa ("the slit-eared "), 
 Mohammed's famous camel, first knelt down in 
 Medina for the Prophet to alight, when that city 
 had accepted and welcomed him, Mohammed built 
 a modest sort of church, called, from the Arabic 
 word that means "to adore," a mosque. The land 
 upon which the camel knelt down belonged to two 
 orphan boys, and in their ardor they wished to 
 present the land to the Prophet. Here, when his 
 mosque was built it was simply a low building of
 
 THE SHEPHERD BOY WHO BECAME A KING. 
 1OI
 
 THE SON OF MAHOMET. 1 03 
 
 brick and mud, thatched with palm branches 
 Mohammed sat daily, preaching, teaching, discuss- 
 ing, judging, governing, and receiving embassies 
 sent from chieftains and kings to do him homage, 
 acknowledging him in the name of their masters as 
 master and ruler of the New Arabia. 
 
 Close beside the Mosque of the Prophet, as this 
 plain little church was called, stood the row of 
 humble mud-built, palm-thatched cottages in which 
 lived Mohammed and his wives. And in one of 
 these cottages, watched over by his Coptic mother 
 and his Arab nurse, lay the year-old Ibrahim, the 
 son of Mohammed. 
 
 The man who had redeemed Arabia from idolatry, 
 immorality, cruelty, and greed, might have had a 
 splendid palace, filled with treasure and cared for 
 by an army of slaves ; for those who followed and 
 revered him thought nothing too good for the 
 leader whom they believed to be, as he proclaimed 
 himself, the Prophet of God. But Mohammed's 
 tastes were simple, and his wants were few. So he 
 and his family lived in the little low, mud-plastered 
 cottages in Medina, which the Prophet himself had 
 helped to build and in which he did the work of a 
 servant, lighting the fires, sweeping the floors, and 
 milking the goats. His home and his table were 
 open and free to all, and his generosity was such 
 that he was often without food or money in his
 
 164 GREAT MEN'S SOWS. 
 
 house. He was fond of children, and liked nothing 
 better than a romp with his little Ibrahim, playing 
 with his toys, laughing, chattering, singing with 
 him, for all the world like many a fond and not 
 famous father of to-day in some out-of-the-way 
 village of Christian America. 
 
 Ibrahim was the son of the Prophet's old age. 
 One by one he had seen his other boys sicken and 
 die. Kasim, the eldest, and next, the little Ab- 
 dallah, had gone from him as little babies, years 
 before, when he was in the midst of worries and 
 struggles. Ibrahim was the child of his triumphs 
 the son who was to succeed to the glories the 
 father had won, and who was to bring to perfection 
 the plans for the world's conversion which this old 
 man of sixty held close to his heart, but could 
 scarcely hope to live to carry out. 
 
 The year when Mohammed fled from Mecca to 
 Medina from rejection to acceptance was called 
 "the year of flight," the Hijra, or " Hegira," as we 
 pronounce the Arabic word. This flight was made 
 on the twentieth of June in the year of our Lord 622. 
 This is the year One of the Mohammedan calendar. 
 According to this chronology the date of Ibrahim's 
 birth was in the sixth year of the Hegira, when his 
 father was fifty-seven years old, or in the year 
 628 A.D. 
 
 This brown little Arabian baby would look up
 
 THE SON OF MAHOMET. IO/ 
 
 into the big restless, black eyes of his brown-faced, 
 handsome father, answering smile for smile, and 
 would coo back his appreciation of the father's 
 caressing speech, just as thousands of Christian 
 babies do for thousands of loving Christian fathers. 
 But, sometimes, this stately father, with the noble 
 head and the restless eyes, would grow grave as he 
 looked down upon his only son, and would say to 
 one who stood beside him : " The heart of the old 
 is always young in two things, my brother, in love 
 for the world and in length of hope. In these it is 
 young, even as is this son of mine, for whom I hope 
 so much and whom I so dearly love ; for, verily, he 
 who is not loving to God's creatures and to his own 
 children, God will not be loving to him." 
 
 Or again, looking at his son and thinking of 
 his own childhood and his long struggle for recog- 
 nition and a foothold, he would repeat softly that 
 verse from his book of precepts that he prepared 
 for his followers the Quran or Koran, which sig- 
 nifies "that which ought to be read " the verse 
 that is prefaced, " In the Name of God, the Com- 
 passionate, the Merciful," and which his followers 
 know as " The Splendor of the Morning " : 
 
 " In the splendor of the morning, 
 And the stillness of the night, 
 The Lord hath not forsaken thee ;
 
 IO8 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 The Lord hath never hated thee ; 
 The Lord will surely make for thee 
 A future fair and bright. 
 
 " Thy Lord will surely give thee gifts 
 Till pleasure great is thine 
 He found thee weak and sheltered thee ; 
 He found thee lost and guided thee ; 
 He found thee poor and dowered thee 
 His goodness is divine. 
 
 " To Him whose almoner thou art 
 Give back what He will claim : 
 As for the weak, oppress him not ; 
 As for the suppliant, chide him not ; 
 As for God's bounty, hide it not, 
 And praise His conquering Name." 
 
 But, alas, for the Prophet's high hopes and ear- 
 nest prayers. The God whom, in his way, he served 
 and taught others to serve, had plans that differed 
 from those the father cherished. Little Ibrahim 
 sickened suddenly and lay ill and suffering in his 
 mother's arms. Mohammed hastened to his sick 
 child, but all the help that he could bring was of no 
 avail. Then he who could not himself bear bodily 
 pain of any kind wept to see his son suffer. 
 
 " Have you not forbidden us to weep for the 
 dying, O Master ? " one of his followers asked. 
 
 " I have forbidden you to shriek and beat your- 
 selves and rend your garments above your dead,
 
 " HE LIKED NOTHING BETTER THAN A ROMP WITH HIS LITTLE IBRAHIM,' 
 
 109
 
 THE SON OF MAHOME T. Ill 
 
 as none but pagans do," Mohammed replied ; "but 
 tears shed for a calamity are as balm to the heart 
 and are sent in mercy." 
 
 But, even as he wept over his suffering boy, the 
 spirit of submission and faith that he taught his 
 followers mingled with his despair. " Ibrahim ! 
 O Ibrahim, my son Ibrahim!" he cried, "if it 
 were not that the promise is faithful and the hope 
 of resurrection sure ; if it were not that this is the 
 way to be trodden by all, and the last of us shall 
 join the first, I would grieve for you with a grief 
 deeper even than this." 
 
 As he spoke the child's struggles ceased. Little 
 Ibrahim was dead. Then Mohammed, laying his 
 hand tenderly upon the sorrowing mother, who 
 like that other Eastern mother we read of, " wept 
 for her child and would not be comforted," said : 
 " Rest assured the remainder of our Ibrahim's 
 childhood and upbringing shall be in Paradise." 
 
 " My son, my son," he said in farewell, as the lit- 
 tle Ibrahim was laid away in the tomb, "when you 
 enter Paradise say to the recording angel : ' God 
 is my Lord ; the Prophet of God is my father ; and 
 Islamism is my faith.' ' For Mohammed preached 
 that those who leave the world must answer a ques- 
 tion as to their life and faith before they could be 
 admitted to heaven. 
 
 So lived and died, within the brief compass of a
 
 112 GREAT MEN'S SOA'S. 
 
 year and a half, the son of Mahomet. A century 
 aofo the son would have been dismissed without 
 
 o 
 
 mention ; the father would scarce have been per- 
 mitted entrance in the roll of the world's great 
 ones. For, so narrow have been the judgments of 
 the past, the world has only recently awakened to 
 the real knowledge of Mahomet. Through cen- 
 turies of misconception it regarded him, as, indeed, 
 many mistily conceive of him to-day, as little more 
 than a brutal old Turk with lots of wives, whose 
 sole claim to notoriety was that he hated the Chris- 
 tians, burned the Alexandrian library, and headed 
 a host of infidels to the conquest of Europe. 
 
 I have tried to give such of you as were still 
 possessed of this idea of Mohammed a change of 
 view. For the Prophet of Arabia was not simply 
 a leader of his people from one ism to another 
 from Paganism to Mohammedanism. Even though 
 the Crusaders called all his followers pagans and 
 infidels, that did not make them so. A pagan is 
 an idolater ; and one of Mohammed's hottest 
 hatreds was against idols. You, therefore, who 
 love Ivan/we, revel in The Talisman, and revere 
 Walter Scott, kindly remember, when you read in 
 his stories of the paynim or spout his stirring ballad 
 of " The Fire King," that the Crusaders are scarcely 
 to be esteemed competent critics in matters of fact 
 as to the followers of the Crescent banner. When
 
 THE SON' OF MAHOMET. 
 
 definitions are sought, the dictionary is the safer 
 guide. 
 
 A SUPPOSED PRINT OF MOHAMMED. 
 
 That tells us that a pagan is an idolater, a 
 heathen ; one who is neither Christian, Moham- 
 medan, nor Jew. Noah Webster, you see, is a
 
 1 14 GREA T MEN'S SONS. 
 
 safer guide than Richard the Lion-Hearted. Mo. 
 hammed was no pagan. 
 
 But, after all, we must excuse the lion-hearted 
 king, big blunderer though he was. For, in the 
 Middle Ages, men did not look beneath the sur- 
 face. They saw only what they saw. To monk 
 and knight and vow-impelled crusader the follower 
 of Mohammed was not a Christian ; therefore he 
 must be pagan and infidel. To-day we reason dif- 
 ferently. But our great-great-grandfathers were 
 not far removed from the crusaders. Indeed, fifty 
 years ago there was scarcely a man who dared say 
 a good word for Mohammed, until a certain bluff 
 and gruff Scotch scholar, named Thomas Carlyle, 
 gave the world a new idea of the prophet of Islam, 
 and boldly declared him to be a great man. Num- 
 bers are not argument ; and yet it would seem that 
 there must be something worth preserving in a 
 faith that is devoutly followed by nearly five 
 hundred millions of people. 
 
 For to-day there are, in round numbers, almost 
 an equal following of Christians and Mohamme- 
 dans in the world. It is curious also to note that 
 both these great religious bodies sprang from the 
 same stock what is called the Semetic. The 
 Hebrew and the Arabian, neighbors in position 
 centuries ago, have filled the world with the pre- 
 cepts of their greatest teachers, converting what is
 
 AN EASTERN MOSQUE. 
 "5
 
 THE SON OF MAHOMET. Il7 
 
 known as the Aryan race to Christianity and the 
 Semetic to Mohammedanism. 
 
 As a faith, Mohammedanism stands for two 
 things God's supremacy and man's brotherhood. 
 You may say : Why, that is just what Christians 
 believe. But the difference seems to be in this : 
 Christianity embraces all mankind ; Mohamme- 
 danism recognizes only the followers of Mohammed. 
 
 But, though their creed be narrow and their 
 
 O 
 
 methods peculiar, their efforts towards making the 
 world better have been notable, and the story of 
 the advance of Mohammed's doctrine reads almost 
 like a romance. It is this : In the seventh century 
 of the Christian era there lived on the borders of a 
 desert an idolatrous people called Arabians. They 
 worshipped a hundred gods and more ; their reli- 
 gious centre was the town of Mecca ; in it was a 
 temple devoted to all the Arabian gods. This 
 temple was in charge of a priestly family. From 
 that family came Mohammed. He had a broad 
 mind ; the idolatry of his people disgusted him ; 
 he conceived the desire of reforming the old 
 Arabian religion. But it could not be reformed. 
 Mohammed was branded as a traitor by his family, 
 forced to flee from Mecca and find refuge in the 
 town of Medina. That flight is called the Hegira, 
 and is the year One of the Mohammedan calendar. 
 Persecution only made Mohammed more persist-
 
 Il8 GREAT MEN'S SON'S. 
 
 ent, and he became the Prophet of his own re- 
 vealed religion, the precepts of which he had drawn 
 from the ideas of Jews and Christians and his own 
 elevated thoughts. He was a great orator, and his 
 speech swayed thousands by its magnetism ; he was 
 a great writer, and his book or bible, the Koran, 
 shows the wonderful depth and breadth of his 
 mind ; he was a great minister, possessed with the 
 desire to help, to reform, and to uplift his fellow- 
 men. He returned to Mecca in triumph. He was 
 a soldier, but his warlike record and that of Mo- 
 hammedanism were due to accident rather than 
 intent. In ten years Mohammed conquered 
 Arabia ; in one hundred years his followers spread 
 his doctrines, until Europe was only saved from 
 conquest by Germanic civilization and the prowess 
 of Charles the Hammer at Tours in France. And 
 to-day Asia and Africa are largely Mohammedan, 
 as Europe and America are mostly Christian. 
 
 Does this give you a different idea of Moham- 
 med and the Mohammedans from that you have 
 learned to accept from your romance-reading in 
 Walter Scott and your history lessons in the age 
 of the crusades? It is time you should know the 
 facts, and find what good you can in all things. 
 For we must learn to see good in any earnest effort 
 toward righteousness. The Mohammedans believe 
 in the Arabian teacher as a prophet sent by God
 
 THE SON OF MAHOMET. 121 
 
 to arouse mankind to better living. They have 
 mingled with this faith much of the sluggishness 
 and superstition of the South, with which we cold- 
 blooded and practical people of the North have 
 but little patience. But we must remember that 
 it was because of Christ that Mohammed became 
 a prophet, and that with all its crude ideas and 
 notions, that seem to us so odd and foolish, the 
 founder of Mohammedanism was indeed a minister 
 of God not seeing the greater light that we who 
 look to the Son of God as our leader have aspired 
 to, but still a regenerator of the world, a benefactor 
 of mankind, a great man, a very great man. 
 Indeed, I am not sure but I should speak to you 
 of him as one of the greatest of men. 
 
 As to his son that dear, little, brown baby of 
 the Arabian land, what would he have been, had 
 he been spared to grow to manhood ? Would he, 
 too, have been great, like his father ? Who shall 
 say ? He was the child of a father's hopes and 
 prayers. But you do not now need to be told that, 
 far too often, it is just such sons that go wrong. 
 After Commodus, one need be surprised at nothing. 
 One could wish, though, to have seen just what 
 sort of a son the Prophet of Islam might have 
 brought up. Then, too, little Ibrahim's mother 
 was a Coptic woman one of the Egyptian Chris- 
 tians. Perhaps her tuition, tinged with the faith
 
 122 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 of her youth, and the teachings of such a thinker 
 as Mohammed, might have made their son a leader 
 in gentler and less bloody paths than that along 
 which Mohammedanism marched to the conquest 
 of nations. But this is speculation only. The sim- 
 ple fact remains that Ibrahim, the son of Moham- 
 med, died a baby, and possesses no claim for 
 remembrance by mankind save in the equally 
 simple fact that he was the son of Mohammed ! 
 His few months of life, off in that far Arabian city, 
 would seem to have been of but small service to 
 the world. But none can say of how much worth 
 to others that life may have been, because of its 
 influence in bringing out the father love of the 
 great man, who so watched it and who was so 
 moved when it went out from earth. For, as I 
 have assured you, with emphasis, the father, who 
 within two years followed his little son to the 
 grave, was a great man. Judged according to 
 Christian light, he may have been mistaken ; but 
 his influence and his teachings have led millions of 
 men out of paganism and indifference ; and, by 
 redeeming Asia from idolatry, anarchy, and greed, 
 have helped on the regeneration and the progress 
 of the world.
 
 VII. 
 
 THE SON OF CHARLEMAGNE. 
 
 (A.D. SooJ 
 
 N the summer of the year 781 
 an odd sort of a procession 
 marched through France. 
 
 There were fluttering standards 
 and melodious trumpets ; there 
 were gallant knights in armor and 
 grave men in robes and gowns ; 
 there were noble ladies and a long train of ser- 
 vants ; there were spearmen and bowmen and 
 horsemen in martial array ; and the central figure 
 of all this parade and pomp was a very tiny boy 
 of but three years old. 
 
 Strangest of all was this small boy's dress. He 
 was but little more than a baby, and yet he rode 
 upon a stately war-horse, housed in purple and 
 gold. He was clad in complete armor of polished 
 
 123
 
 124 . GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 steel ; on his head he wore a casque of steel and 
 gold, surmounted with a tiny golden crown ; in his 
 small hand he bore a truncheon, and about his 
 neck was slung a cross-handled sword of steel and 
 gold. 
 
 A stalwart knight rode at the little boy's bridle- 
 rein, his protecting arm holding the small rider 
 firmly in the saddle ; the royal banner fluttered 
 ahead, and on the boy's right hand rode his gov- 
 ernor and guardian, Count William, called the Snub- 
 Nosed well, because he was. 
 
 From castle and cottage, from town and hamlet, 
 came thronging men and women, boys and girls, 
 with smile and cheer and the shout of joyous wel- 
 come : " Heaven bless his little Grace ! God 
 guard our little King ! Long live King Louis !" 
 
 For this very small boy of three was indeed a 
 king, entering his dominions. He had been crowned 
 by the Pope at Rome King of Aquitaine. Then, 
 from his father's splendid palace in Aachen, or 
 what is now the German city of Aix-la-Chapelle, 
 he had started with his glittering escort to take 
 possession of his kingdom in southwestern France. 
 
 During the first part of the journey he was car- 
 ried in his cradle ; but when he left the city of 
 Orleans, and crossing the Loire set foot within his 
 own dominions, this cradle-travelling, so the old 
 chronicle tells us, " beseemed him no longer." He
 
 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 12? 
 
 was a king and this was his kingdom ; therefore 
 like a king he must make his royal progress. So 
 upon this little three-year-old was put a suit of 
 shining armor, made expressly for him, with sword 
 and truncheon " equally proportioned " ; they set 
 him on horseback, and thus, royally attended, he 
 entered Aquitaine and marched on to his own royal 
 palace at Toulouse. No doubt he looked " awfully 
 cunning," this three-year-old in armor but think 
 how tired the poor little fellow must have been ! 
 
 Aquitaine was that large section of southwestern 
 France that stretched from the river Loire to the 
 Pyrenees, and from the Bay of Biscay eastward to 
 the banks of the Rhone. It had been brought 
 under subjection by the conquering monarch whose 
 short-lived empire embraced all of Europe from 
 Rome to Copenhagen, and from the English Chan- 
 nel to the Iron Gates of the Danube, and who, 
 parcelling out his dominions among his boys, had 
 set over the principality of Aquitaine, as king of 
 the whole land, his little three-year-old Louis, for- 
 ever famous as the son of Charlemagne. 
 
 Here, in his palace at Toulouse, did Louis rule 
 as King of Aquitaine for thirty-two years, subject 
 only to his renowned father, Charles the Emperor, 
 called by men Carolus Magnus, or Charlemagne. 
 
 This mighty man, " the greatest of the Ger- 
 mans," great in stature, in aims, in energy, and in
 
 128 
 
 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 authority, looked sharply after the small boy he 
 had made King of Aquitaine. He had the lad 
 carefully and thoroughly educated, and Louis grew 
 to be an intellectual, bright-faced, clear-eyed, sturdy, 
 and strong young man. But he was sober and 
 sedate, skilled in the Scriptures and learned in 
 Latin and Greek, unsuited to 
 the rough war-days in which 
 he lived, more a scholar than 
 a soldier, and more a priest 
 than a prince. 
 
 So the years slipped by. 
 Then trouble came to the great 
 Emperor. One by one the 
 sons of Charlemagne sickened 
 and died, those brave and 
 stalwart boys, upon whom the 
 father had relied as the stay 
 and help of his old age, his 
 successors in his plan of em- 
 pire. At last only Louis the 
 Clerk was left. 
 
 Hludwig Fromme he was called by his subjects 
 of Aquitaine that is, Louis the Kind ; and thus, 
 although the title has been wrongly rendered, the 
 name of this good and peace-loving son of Charle- 
 magne has come down to us as Louis the Pious, or 
 Louis le Debonair.
 
 129 
 
 LOUIS THE GENTLE KNIGHT.
 
 THE SON OF CHARLEMAGNE. 131 
 
 Nowadays we are apt to think of debonair as 
 meaning gay, careless, fashionable, and " dudish " ; 
 but Louis the son of Charlemagne was anything 
 but this. He was kindly, courteous, loving, gentle, 
 and true ; but he was, also, strict, dutiful, and just. 
 He was what Chaucer calls a very " parfait, gentel 
 knight " ; he was strong of limb and stout of arm ; 
 none could bend bow better nor couch lance truer 
 than he ; but he never cared for sport, or the rough 
 " horse-play" of his day ; he seldom laughed aloud ; 
 he was grave, prudent, and wise, "slow to anger, 
 swift to pity, liberal in both giving and forgiving." 
 That is the picture of an agreeable and attractive 
 boy, is it not ? Not a lively, fun-loving, mischiev- 
 ous, and companionable comrade, perhaps, but a 
 good-tempered, well-meaning, friendly, and reliable 
 " pattern " boy in every respect. 
 
 Louis won the loyalty of his subjects of Aqui- 
 taine by love and not by tyranny ; he kept at bay 
 the " pagan " Moors of Spain, and, under wise coun- 
 sellors, sought to govern his kingdom justly and well. 
 
 But when his brothers died and he, the youngest 
 of the three, was summoned to his father's side, he 
 left his palace by the Garonne River, in pleasant 
 Toulouse, and hastened to Aix-la-Chapelle, his 
 father's capital. 
 
 It was the year 813. An assembly of the nobles 
 of the empire met the great king in his capital and
 
 132 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 promised to recognize King Louis of Aquitaine as 
 heir to the throne of Charlemagne. 
 
 Then, in the great church that he had built at 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, the old monarch, dressed in the 
 magnificent robes which he never liked and would 
 but rarely put on, stood before the vast assembly 
 of the princes and nobles of Germany, leaning 
 upon the shoulders of his sturdily built and kindly 
 looking son. 
 
 The sounds of prayer and song that opened the 
 ceremony were stilled, and then the old emperor, 
 facing his son, told him that the lords and barons 
 of the empire had sanctioned his appointment as 
 associate and heir. 
 
 " You will reign in my stead," he said. " Fear 
 God, my son, and follow His law. Govern the 
 Church with care and defend it from its enemies. 
 Preserve the Empire ; show kindness to your rela- 
 tions ; honor the clergy as your fathers, and love 
 the people as your children. Force the proud and 
 the evil ones to take the paths of virtue ; be the 
 friend of the faithful, and the helper of the poor. 
 Choose your ministers wisely ; take from no man 
 his property unjustly ; and keep yourself pure and 
 above reproach in the eyes of God and man." 
 
 Then Charlemagne bade Louis take up the iron 
 crown of Rome and the Empire that lay upon the 
 altar and place it upon his head.
 
 THE SON OF CHARLEMAGNE. 135 
 
 " Wear it worthily, O King, my son," the father 
 said, "as a gift from God, your father, and the 
 nation." 
 
 And when the son of Charlemagne had thus 
 crowned himself emperor, the old man, his father, 
 turned to the great assembly and said : 
 
 " Behold ! I present to you, your sovereign and 
 your lord. Salute him, all people, as Emperor and 
 Augustus ! " 
 
 A mighty shout of loyalty and welcome filled the 
 crowded church. And thus was the son of Charle- 
 magne crowned as his father's associate and suc- 
 cessor. But when, in the year 814, Charlemagne, 
 still a sturdy old man, suddenly fell sick of a fever 
 and died, in his palace at Aix-la-Chapelle, at the 
 age of seventy-one, the helper became the head and 
 Louis ascended the throne of what was called the 
 Holy Roman Empire, as its sole and sovereign lord. 
 
 He came to his vast power with high hopes and 
 lofty aims. The solemn words of his father on that 
 coronation day lived in his memory, and he deter- 
 mined to rule in peace, in justice, in wisdom, and in 
 love. He would abstain from war: he would lift 
 his people higher ; he would make his court learned, 
 refined, and pure ; he would be father and friend 
 to all his people and make his realm rejoice. Louis, 
 called the Pious and the Kind-Hearted,should rather 
 have been styled Louis the Well-intentioned.
 
 136 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 But, alas ! for good intentions, if strength of will 
 be lacking. Louis lived in harsh and brutal days, 
 and men could appreciate neither his gentle man- 
 ners nor his worthy aims. He had neither his 
 father's strength of mind nor firmness of will, nor 
 had he what is called magnetism the power to 
 compel men to do as one elects. 
 
 His noble aims were speedily brought to nought ; 
 his high purpose was swiftly overthrown ; his am- 
 bitious sons opposed him, quarrelled with him, de- 
 fied him, assailed and dethroned him ; and, after a 
 stormy reign of twenty-six years, during which he 
 wished, many times, to give up his crown and be- 
 come a monk, Louis the Well-intentioned died, in 
 the summer of 840, on one of the little islands in 
 the river Rhone a discrowned, defeated, and sor- 
 rowing king, conquered by his sons. 
 
 The great empire his father had left him was 
 speedily broken asunder, and from its remains, 
 after long years of disorder and of blood, came at 
 last the nations of Germany and France the out- 
 growth of that vast heritage of power which the 
 son of Charlemagne had received from his mighty 
 father, but had neither wit nor will enough to 
 govern or hold unbroken. 
 
 A noble man, in many ways, was Louis, the son 
 of Charlemagne. But he was out of touch with his 
 times ; for stormy seas demand a strong hand at
 
 THE SON OF CHARLEMAGNE. 137 
 
 the helm, and great matters require the head to 
 plan and the will to do. 
 
 In all of these requirements for governing was 
 Louis deficient ; so, while history accords him 
 praise for honesty of purpose, gentleness of heart, 
 good intentions, and lofty aims, it still writes him 
 down as an unsuccessful ruler, because this weak- 
 willed son could not uphold the heritage or con- 
 tinue the glory of a father who indeed was great. 
 
 That Charlemagne was rightly given the title of 
 great Carolus Magnus, Charles the Great no 
 one can question. Mighty in intellect as in ambi- 
 tion, in strength of arm and force of will, noble 
 alike in aims and efforts, he built his name into the 
 history of the world as few other makers of nations 
 have been able to do, and alike in character, in 
 ability, in influence, and in results, his name stands 
 foremost among the world's great men. 
 
 His plan, however, to make of Western Chris- 
 tendom a single, mighty empire of which he and 
 his successors should be ruler and head, was a 
 dream that never could come true not even with 
 so marvellous a man as he at the helm. After his 
 death, the empire, as we have seen, speedily fell 
 apart, and the hand of Louis, his son, was not firm 
 enough nor his name strong enough to carry for- 
 ward Charlemagne's dream of a universal Christian 
 empire.
 
 138 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 Against our picture of that beautiful boy-king 
 making his triumphant progress across his king- 
 dom, which was your first introduction to Louis 
 the son of Charlemagne, let us set this other 
 almost the last glimpse we get of the lord of lost 
 intentions. 
 
 It is fifty years later. The Red Field, where 
 Louis had faced in fight his three rebellious sons, 
 had proved so disastrous by reason of the desertion 
 of his most trusted followers, that men renamed it 
 the Field of Lies. Louis, left unsupported, sur- 
 rendered himself to his sons, and three months 
 later stood before an assembly of the nobles, 
 priests, and barons of the empire in the church of 
 St. Medard at Soissons to read his act of renun- 
 ciation. 
 
 Worn and gray with his woes and worries, an 
 old man though only fifty-three, the son of Charle- 
 magne, in the presence of his three unfilial sons, 
 read in an unsteady voice indeed, it is hinted that 
 he was sulky, and moved almost to refuse at the 
 last moment a confession of his faults as emperor 
 and father. He admitted that he was incapable, 
 that he was not fit to rule, and confessed that, by 
 his faults, he had " suffered to sink so sadly low 
 the empire that had been raised to grandeur and 
 brought into unity by Charlemagne his father." 
 
 Then he laid upon the altar of the church his
 
 THE SON OF CHARLEMAGNE. 139 
 
 baldric, or richly ornamented belt of kingship ; he 
 threw down the sceptre, and stripping off his impe- 
 rial robes received from the hands of the Arch- 
 bishop of Rheims the gray robes of the penitent, 
 whose only home was the convent. Thus he gave 
 up his sovereignty. 
 
 It was a sad ending to all his early dreams of 
 grandeur, and all his father's hopes and ambitions. 
 
 But you have heard, have you not, of the impos- 
 sibility of fitting a square peg in a round hole. 
 Louis the Well-intentioned was simply a misfit 
 king. He meant well, but he was not made to fit 
 the hole that was to be filled. He was better fitted 
 to be the head of a monastery or of a church than 
 to be the ruler of a mighty empire, and so he failed 
 to "fill the bill." 
 
 History is full of just such examples of misfit 
 kings. Few of them, however, have been of equal 
 worth as men, or fitted to be of such real benefit to 
 the world, as this unfortunate son of Charlemagne. 
 In other times or with other surroundings he might 
 have left his mark upon the age ; but, unable to 
 bear the weight of empire, or the burden of re- 
 sponsibility that his father left him, he gave up 
 trying, and is counted by the world a failure. 
 
 And yet no man who wishes to benefit the world 
 and tries to do his best is ever a failure. It is the 
 men who apparently have failed that have been
 
 1/J.O 
 
 GREA T MEN'S SONS. 
 
 really the greatest successes. Socrates, Leonidas, 
 Galileo, their failure was their victory. So, per- 
 haps, to Louis the Well-intentioned may be put 
 down the white mark of successful failure, for even 
 in death he pardoned his rebellious sons, and about 
 his name has ever lingered an atmosphere of good- 
 ness, gentleness, and peace.
 
 VIII. 
 
 THE SON OF ALFRED. 
 
 (A.D. goo.) 
 
 IN a certain small room in what was known as 
 "the king's house" at Leonaford, in south- 
 western England, a brother and sister sat singing a 
 ringing old ballad, a thousand years ago. 
 
 English boy and girl though they were, the 
 words of their song would to-day sound strange 
 and harsh and foreign to children of English blood ; 
 but those were the early days of English speech 
 and English song, and the father of this boy and 
 girl, though he was a king, was also writer, trans- 
 lator, and editor, and to him belongs the credit of 
 giving the breath of life to English literature. 
 
 He was a leader along many other lines. He 
 was the first King in Britain who planned for a 
 United England ; he was the earliest framer of the
 
 142 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 English state ; he was the founder of England's 
 navy ; he was the champion of English liberty and 
 of the English Church. He was alike soldier and 
 scholar, alike singer and saint, alike law-keeper 
 and truth-lover, alike monarch and man. He sent 
 into icy seas the first arctic expedition, and to 
 "India's coral strand" the first Christian mission- 
 aries. He is a hero of romance, and a hero in 
 reality as well, "the most perfect character in 
 history," according to certain wise historians in 
 other words, he was Alfred the Great ! And this 
 ten-year old boy, who sat in " the king's house " at 
 Leonaford, singing Saxon songs with his sister, was 
 Edward, the son of Alfred, destined to leave a 
 name famous in English history as soldier and as 
 king. 
 
 Edward, the son of Alfred, was born in "the 
 king's tun," or town of Wantage, among the Berk- 
 shire hills in the year 871, the very year in which 
 his father became king of the West Saxons. Things 
 looked dark indeed for this young king of twenty- 
 two when his eldest son was born. The Danish 
 vikings had changed from pirates to invaders, and, 
 swooping down upon the possessions of young 
 King Alfred, harried all southwestern England 
 with fire and sword. For six years the terrible 
 strife went on between victorious Danes and de- 
 feated Saxons, until King Alfred was driven hither
 
 THE SON OF ALFRED. 
 
 143 
 
 and thither, and finally forced to seek safety in the 
 fastnesses of the great marshes of Somersetshire. 
 
 Here, in the western marshland, young Edward 
 lived with his defeated but never despairing father 
 
 -<Mb 
 
 ALFRED THE GREAT IN HIS STUDY. 
 
 until the brave king gathered strength for a fresh 
 endeavor, and, with a furious onset, burst upon the 
 Danish camp at Edington, drove the bulk of the
 
 144 GREAT MEN'S SONS, 
 
 invaders " over-sea," recovered his wasted king- 
 dom, and, by a treaty, made in 878, and famous in 
 history as the Peace of Wedmone, obtained rest 
 and tranquillity for nearly fifteen years. 
 
 It was during this time of partial peace for 
 there was, still, fighting with the Danes " off and 
 on " through those treaty years that the boy Ed- 
 ward received his instructions in the palace-school, 
 which his royal father started for the young nobles 
 of his kingdom. 
 
 We do not gather from the old records that 
 young Edward, the prince, or atheling, as the 
 Saxon title ran, was a very eager scholar in his 
 father's palace-school. As compared with his 
 younger brother, Ethelward, he seems to have 
 been the laggard in his studies, and more fond of 
 the school of arms than the school of letters. 
 While Ethelward became proficient in Latin and 
 English, Edward's schooling was confined to Saxon 
 reading, psalms, and songs. But in those years of 
 peace Edward grew proficient in the use of war- 
 weapons, in the handling of men, and in the art of 
 governing. When he was fifteen his father, the 
 king, recaptured London from the Danes, and, 
 during the peace, that city was frequently visited 
 by the young prince, as it was governed by his 
 brother-in-law, the Duke of Mercia, the vassal 
 kingdom that joined Wessex on the north.
 
 THE BOYHOOP OF EDWARD THE ATHELING. " HE WAS NOT AN EAGER SCHOLAR 
 145 IN THE PALACE-SCHOOL."
 
 THE SON OF ALFRED. 147 
 
 This Duke of Mercia, the ealdorman or alderman 
 Ethelred, as he was called, had married in the year 
 880 the thirteen-year old daughter of King Alfred. 
 She was Prince Edward's eldest sister. Her name 
 was Ethelfled. It is so rare for us to come across 
 reliable records of historic girls in those old days, 
 when it was not considered the proper thing for 
 girls to make themselves historic, that it is pleasant 
 to add to this picture of a great man's son, the 
 companion portrait of a great man's daughter. 
 
 That Ethelfled, the daughter of Alfred, was a 
 remarkable woman, everything we read about her 
 assures us. She was three or four years older 
 than her brother Edward, but she was his com- 
 panion in his childhood, his admirer in his boyhood, 
 and his supporter and ally in his manhood. 
 
 Indeed, had it not been for her support, neither 
 Alfred, her father, nor Edward, her brother, could 
 have fought their way so sturdily to success and 
 sovereignty. 
 
 As I have told you, Ethelfled married when she 
 was but thirteen years old, the Alderman Ethelred, 
 Duke of Mercia. The section known as Mercia 
 was that fair portion of Central England that 
 stretches from the Thames to the Mersey the 
 land between Liverpool and London. Before 
 Alfred's day, Mercia had been the most flourishing 
 portion of England, and about the only portion of
 
 148 GKEA T MEN'S SONS. 
 
 the Isle of Britain known to the people of Europe, 
 who, indeed, gave to its rulers the title of " Kings of 
 the English." But while King Alfred was fighting 
 for his life in the South, the Danish invaders 
 conquered Mercia, drove its king over sea and held 
 sway through all mid-England until Alfred's sturdy 
 sword-arm swept them away. Then he annexed 
 Mercia to his kingdom, made his nephew, young 
 Ethelred, its duke or alderman, and in 880, as I 
 have told you, gave the duke his eldest daughter 
 as wife. 
 
 Ethelfled was, for her time, what we now call 
 "advanced." She was clear-headed, far-sighted, 
 ambitious, and strong-minded though in the best 
 and most helpful sense. She had a love and 
 loyalty both for her father Alfred and her brother 
 Edward, and saw that only in union with them 
 were success or security in England possible. She 
 converted her husband Ethelred to the same 
 opinion. While he lived, the husband and wife 
 acted as allies and vassals of Ethelfled's father and 
 brother; and when, in the year 912, the Duke 
 Ethelred died, his wife, who had long been the 
 stronger of the two, bent all her energies to the 
 support and strengthening of King Edward's 
 power. 
 
 For at that time, Edward had, for years, been 
 King of the West Saxons. His career had been
 
 149 
 
 THE MANHOOD OF ALFRED'S SON. 
 " WARLIKE AND VICTORIOUS FROM BOYHOOD,"
 
 THE SON OF ALFRED. 151 
 
 warlike and victorious from boyhood. While he 
 was yet prince or atheling, even before his 
 twentieth birthday, his father Alfred, made him 
 ruler, under the fatherly oversight, of all the 
 eastern section of his kingdon, embracing the 
 counties of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex. Under 
 their responsibility and experience the boy quickly 
 developed into a man. 
 
 It was well that the young atheling stood his 
 father's test ; for the day for action soon came. In 
 the year 894 the Danes broke the long truce, and 
 once more burst into King Alfred's possessions. 
 The call to arms was speedily answered, and Ed- 
 ward the Atheling, with the fighting men of Kent, 
 was foremost in the field, marching to his father's 
 aid. 
 
 The Danes of England joined their invading 
 kinsmen, and a great gathering of " the black 
 robbers," as men called them, threatened King 
 Alfred's realm. But father and son joined forces 
 for. a determined struggle. The young atheling, 
 sent to watch the fortified camp of the Danes in 
 Essex, made a brilliant dash upon it, looted and 
 burned it, scuttled or burned the Danish fleet that 
 was moored beside it, joined his father at Farnham, 
 and won a signal victory over the desperate Danes ; 
 then, leaving his father, he marched hastily to the 
 relief of his brother-in-law, the Duke of Mercia,
 
 152 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 who, seconded by his brave young wife, was defend- 
 ing London against the Danes. The son and son- 
 in-law of King Alfred, joining forces, stormed the 
 Danish camp at Bernfleet, captured and plundered 
 it, and then, hurrying west, surprised and defeated 
 the Danes on the banks of the river Severn. Next, 
 the fiery young Edward joined his father, and they 
 fought so valiantly and well that once again the 
 Danes were driven over sea and forced into a peace. 
 Thus was Southern England once more freed from 
 invasion. 
 
 On the twenty-eighth of October, in the year 
 901, Alfred the Great died. He was not yet an 
 old man, being but fifty-four ; but his had been a 
 life of struggle against sickness as well as against 
 the invading Danes, and he was old almost before 
 his time. 
 
 Before he died, so the record runs, he called his 
 eldest son to him and said : " My dear son Edward, 
 sit thou now beside me, and I will deliver unto 
 thee true instruction. My son, I feel that my hour 
 is near; my face is pale ; my days are nearly run. 
 We must soon part. I shall go to another world, 
 and thou shalt be left alone with all my wealth. I 
 pray thee, for thou art my dear child, strive to be a 
 father and a lord to thy people ; be thou the chil-- 
 dren's father, and the widow's friend ; comfort thou 
 the poor and shelter the weak, and, with all thy
 
 THE SON OF ALFRED. I 5$ 
 
 might, right that which is wrong. And, my son, 
 govern thyself by law ; then shall the Lord love 
 thee, and God, above all things, shall be thy re- 
 ward. Call thou upon Him to advise thee in all 
 thy need, and so He shall help thee the better to 
 compass that which thou wouldest." 
 
 So the good and grand king died, and Edward, 
 the son of Alfred, at the age of thirty years, sat upon 
 his father's throne as King of the West Saxons, de- 
 termined to follow his father's parting counsels, 
 and to be "father and lord " to all his people. 
 
 He was not permitted to occupy the throne with- 
 out a struggle. His cousin Ethelwald challenged 
 his right to the crown of Alfred, and gave him much 
 trouble by stirring up the Danes and enlisting them 
 under the rebel banner. But Edward fought val- 
 iantly for his throne, and success at last crowned 
 his endeavors. Cousin Ethelwald was defeated 
 and killed in the year 906, and Edward's title of 
 king stood undisputed. 
 
 From that time forward King Edward's career 
 was one of victory in war and wisdom in governing. 
 His ability as a general and " war-lord " was indeed 
 marvellous. He made the most of every oppor- 
 tunity, and turned to account every advantage. In 
 conjunction with the brave " Lady of Mercia," as his 
 remarkable sister Ethelfled was called, he fought the 
 Panes up and down the entire length of England.
 
 I 54 GREA T MEN'S SONS. 
 
 While Edward drove them out of the Thames 
 valley and securely guarded his sea front, Ethel- 
 fled built forts on the west to protect the land from 
 the fiery Welshmen ; she pushed the Danes away 
 on the north and east ; gained possession of the 
 famous highway that stretched across Middle Eng- 
 land and was known as Watling Street ; by a re- 
 markable chain of forts and earthworks, she guarded 
 the entire frontier of Mercia from attack, and thus 
 enabled Edward to complete his conquest of the 
 Danes. 
 
 There is, in all history, no more interesting, if 
 indeed there is any similar combination of a war- 
 like brother and sister, such as this of Edward and 
 Ethelfled. Without him, Ethelfled could scarcely 
 have held her own against the relentless Danes ; 
 without her, Edward could never so successfully 
 have turned back the Danish flood and united 
 England into a powerful state. Her vigor, her 
 will, and her unconquerable spirit did much to for- 
 ward Edward's success and make his power secure. 
 Between them they freed England from the Danish 
 grip that had so long held the English people by 
 the throat, and when in the year 918 she died, 
 amid the shouts of victory, that told of conquered 
 Leicester and of York, her triumph was rendered 
 complete and her death made even more glorious by 
 the tidings that came to her of the complete victory
 
 THE SON OF ALFKJSD. 155 
 
 gained by her gallant brother and over-lord King 
 Edward, in the broad fen-country of Eastern Eng- 
 land. Alfred's son and daughter were, indeed, an 
 honor to his name. In all English history, no 
 two heroes are more worthy the remembrance of 
 English-speaking boys and girls than this brother 
 and sister, whom men love to refer to as " Alfred's 
 unconquered son " and the " brave Lady of 
 Mercia." 
 
 After Ethelfled's death " at Tamworth tower and 
 town " (which, if you remember your Sir Walter 
 Scott, afterwards hailed the warlike but unlovely 
 Marmion as its lord), King Edward easily com- 
 pleted the conquest that his own ability and his 
 sister's energy had rendered possible. And when 
 in the year 924 he died at Farndon, in Northamp- 
 tonshire, in the fifty-third year of his life and the 
 twenty-fourth of his reign, his kingdom extended 
 from the land north of the Humber Northumber- 
 land to the English channel. Wales and Scotland 
 acknowledged his sway as " over-lord," and, after 
 his death, his son and grandson, as vigorous as he, 
 became lords of " all England." 
 
 Brave, earnest, and ambitious, Edward the Elder 
 as he is called, "Alfred's unconquered son," as the 
 historians name him, was one of the best and most 
 successful of the Kings of Saxon England. He and 
 his successors are an exception to the rule as to the
 
 I$6 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 weakness of great men's sons ; for they were a wise 
 and worthy race of rulers, meriting the praise the 
 English poet, Wordsworth, gave them a thousand 
 years after their day and generation : 
 
 " The race of Alfred covet glorious pains 
 When dangers threaten, dangers ever new, 
 Black tempests bursting, blacker still in view ; 
 But manly sovereignty its hold retains : 
 The root secure, the branches bold to strive 
 With the fierce tempest." 
 
 The son of Alfred may not have been as great 
 as his father. But he was great. Mr. Freeman 
 holds him to have been "the first prince who could 
 really claim to be King of the English and Lord of 
 the Isle of Britain " ; and he adds, what is especially 
 true of King Edward, " it is only the unequalled 
 glory of his father which has condemned this 
 prince, one of the greatest rulers that England 
 ever beheld, to a smaller degree of popular fame 
 than he deserves." Which proves that it is some- 
 times hard on a boy to be a great man's son ! If 
 he is great, the father gets all the credit ; if he 
 turns out badly, the boy himself gets the blame. 
 The world has not sufficiently honored the great 
 son of Alfred a man and a ruler worthy, indeed, 
 to bear his father's greater name. 
 
 I wish I could give you the facts as to Edward's 
 mother that lovable woman with the queer old
 
 THE SON OF ALFRED. 157 
 
 Saxon name, Ealhswyth, daughter of the Duke or 
 Alderman of Gainsborough, and wife of Alfred the 
 Great. But history records little concerning her. 
 I, however, am stoutly of the opinion that she, in 
 connection with her noble husband, did much in 
 the midst of privation, defeat, and slow success, 
 towards shaping the character of her famous son 
 and daughter. But she, too, as do they, seems 
 to have been absolutely overshadowed by Alfred's 
 mighty name. 
 
 It is, I imagine, hard lines for a boy to be so 
 completely put in the shade by a father's fame. 
 Unless the son has a noble ambition of his own, 
 and a well-balanced desire to maintain the standard 
 the father has established, he is apt either to rest 
 upon the prominence his father has attained, or 
 as certain great men's sons have done to make 
 capital out of his father's name and fame. It is 
 not often that, as in England, the two Pitts, father 
 and son, make, each for himself, a deathless name, 
 or, as in the United States, the Harrisons and the 
 Adamses give presidents to the republic in succeed- 
 ing generations. 
 
 I wish you, therefore, in the case of King Alfred 
 and King Edward, to give due credit to the son 
 while taking away nothing from the greatness of 
 the father. That greatness, indeed, can never be 
 belittled. As Green, the historian of the English
 
 158 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 people, expresses it, " Alfred stands in the fore- 
 front of his race, for he is the noblest as he is the 
 most complete embodiment of all that is great, all 
 that is lovable, in the English temper. 
 His memory has come down to us with a living 
 distinctness through the mists of exaggeration 
 and legend which time gathered round it. The 
 love which he won a thousand years ago has lin- 
 gered about his name from that day to this. While 
 every other name of those earlier times has all but 
 faded from the recollection of Englishmen, that of 
 Alfred remains familiar to every English child." 
 
 It is for us to see that the name of the son, a 
 bright and shining light in "those earlier times" 
 that Mr. Green refers to, does not fade from the 
 recollection of the English-speaking race. He 
 belongs to us with the other great men of the 
 past. Edward, prince and king, is well worth our 
 remembrance and honor. Like his father, he was 
 patient amid privation, steadfast through disap- 
 pointment, modest and noble in the midst of suc- 
 cess. He inherited alike his father's bravery in 
 war and his father's ability in governing. His 
 purpose to unite all England under his rule was 
 formed in boyhood and held firm to the end, and 
 he died in 925, "father and lord" of all the Eng- 
 lish land. 
 
 It is a grand thing for a boy to have a purpose
 
 THE SON OF ALFRED. 159 
 
 in life. Often this develops slowly, and takes force 
 and form only when the boy has become a man. 
 But not unfrequently, as in young Edward's case, 
 circumstances create purpose early in life, and 
 under the fostering care of a good and noble 
 father, or a wise and worthy mother the son shapes 
 his course, and pursues it to honor and success. 
 
 Edward, King of the English, was the great son 
 of a great father. To his wise efforts and valiant 
 actions are due much of England's prosperity, 
 power, and growth and of America's, as well. 
 For America sprang from the same parent stock, 
 and American boys and girls share equally with 
 those of England the traditions and the glory that 
 gather about the names of the mighty Alfred and 
 "Alfred's unconquered son."
 
 IX. 
 
 THE SON OF WILLIAM. 
 
 (A.D. uoo.) 
 
 THE three Falls boys were at it again ! They 
 were always quarrelling, but this time it was 
 worse than ever. It all came out of a poor attempt 
 at a joke. This was the way of it : The two younger 
 brothers, " Redny" and "the Kid," had gone into 
 the room above the one in which " Shorty " and some 
 of his friends were having a " scrapping match," and 
 they had, then and there, proceeded to amuse them- 
 selves by pouring dirty water through the cracks 
 of the illy-matched floor upon the heads of their 
 brother and his "crowd." Naturally, "Shorty" 
 and his friends were very angry. Rushing up the 
 stairs they " pitched into " the other boys and their 
 company, and a brutal, rough-and-tumble fight fol- 
 lowed that filled the whole house with yelling and 
 
 160
 
 THE SON OF WILLIAM. l6l 
 
 tumult, and might have ended fatally for some of 
 the " combatants " had not the father of the three 
 brothers tumbled out of his bed, and, rushing up 
 the stairs, burst into the room, fat, puffing, and 
 out of breath, and demanded of his sons how they 
 dared kick up such a row while he was trying to 
 sleep, and in a house where they were visitors, 
 too? 
 
 All of which sounds very modern, does it not ? 
 Quite like the newspaper account of a row between 
 roughs in some one of the low places of the cities 
 of to-day ? Far from it. These three brothers 
 were princes, rich, powerful, and bravely dressed. 
 And the fat father, who had been awakened by 
 the noise and riot, and had come puffing up the 
 stairs to protest, was the greatest and most power- 
 ful man of his time William, Duke of Normandy, 
 and King of England, called the Conqueror, and 
 the Great. 
 
 Even the nicknames are historic. The three 
 sons of William the Conqueror were Robert, called 
 "Courthose" or "Shorty"; William, called 
 " Rufus " or " Redny," and Henry, called " the 
 Little Clerk "or "the Kid." 
 
 They were as quarrelsome as any three brothers 
 that have lived since the days of Romulus and 
 Remus. Their father had been Duke of Normandy ; 
 he had conquered England ; he ruled a wide
 
 1 62 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 extended kingdom with vigor and success ; but he 
 never was able to conquer or to rule his three un- 
 ruly boys Robert, William, and Henry. They 
 were jealous, they were envious, they were sus- 
 picious each one of the other two. And thus they 
 remained until time and tragedies took them, one 
 by one, away. First, the father was thrown from his 
 horse while he was burning the French town of Le 
 Mans ; next, William was murdered while deer- 
 hunting in the English forest ; then, Robert died 
 in the Norman prison in which his younger brother 
 had shut him. Thus Henry was left, the sole 
 representative of the great house of Falaise or the 
 Falls, which had given dukes to Normandy and 
 kings to England. 
 
 This disgraceful fight in the Castle of the Eagle, 
 on the southern boundary of Normandy, in the 
 year 1078, is the first glimpse we get of the best 
 and brightest, the cleverest and the longest lived 
 of the three sons of William the Conqueror. At 
 this time he was ten years old, too young to be 
 mixed up in such an outrageous row. 
 
 Henry, the youngest son of William the Con- 
 queror and Matilda his wife, was born in the little 
 English town of Selby, in Yorkshire, in the fall of 
 the year 1068. His older brothers were sons of 
 the Duke of Normandy. He was son of the 
 crowned King of England. As such, men told
 
 THE SON OF WILLIAM. 163 
 
 him, he alone could succeed his father as king. On 
 this account he gave himself airs as a boy and 
 beset his father with repeated requests, demanding 
 precedence over his brothers, because he, only, was 
 an English prince. But his father always cut his 
 complaints and demands short. " There, there, 
 don't cry over it, son Henry," King William would 
 say, " your time will come ; you, too, will yet be 
 King of England." 
 
 Deprived of the power that was given to his 
 eldest brother, Robert, and the promises made to 
 his second brother, William, young Henry took to 
 his books and became a book-lover, a student and 
 a writer, in the days when men scorned book-learn- 
 ing and only the priests were literary. This love 
 of learning gave him the name that clung to him 
 for over eight hundred years. For he is still 
 known as Henry Beauclerc Henry the good 
 scholar. 
 
 A stout and sturdy, well-built and well-favored 
 boy ; of medium size, black haired and bright-eyed. 
 Henry was at once the most attractive and most 
 winning of the three living sons of William the 
 Conqueror. He was a daring rider, an expert 
 archer, a sure hand at sword and lance, and, be- 
 sides being a good scholar, he was far-sighted, 
 keen-witted and clever. 
 
 " Never mind his goings on," King William had
 
 164 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 said, when some of the pranks of his oldest son 
 Robert the "ne'er do well " had been reported to 
 him, "Shorty may act the fool now, but he will be 
 a good soldier as he grows older." 
 
 To which good word for his elder brother, young 
 Henry, looking up from his ^Esop, said : " It may 
 be, my father; but to my mind a know-nothing king 
 is but a crowned ass." 
 
 Henry was "dubbed" a knight in the year 1086, 
 and the very next year in September, 1087, he 
 stood by the bedside of his dying father. A 
 stumbling horse in the smouldering ruins of La 
 Mans had brought swift punishment to the Con- 
 queror for his cruelty to that pleasant town, and 
 the end of his life had come. By his bedside stood 
 William the Red, and Henry the Scholar. 
 
 To Robert, his oldest son, the father said he gave 
 the Dukedom of Normandy. England, which he 
 had conquered unjustly, he would leave to no one ; 
 let Him who was Judge of all decide to whom it 
 should go ; he left the settlement to God but he 
 hoped William the Red might be England's king. 
 And off to England, without waiting for his father 
 to die, hurried William the Red, not willing that 
 the Lord should decide unaided. 
 
 " And what dost thou give to me, my father ? " 
 young Henry asked he who held still to the be- 
 lief that England rightfully belonged to him.
 
 i '-':' ' ^I^ii^^-f "* 
 
 !^%^. ;r 
 
 -^> v !i s.*.. : \i'-i ' J 
 
 It l^\'\^^''^j^i^^ 
 
 4 *>. ^ '/-' *' 
 
 >, 
 
 THE TRAINING OF A NORMAN PRINCE THE BOYHOOD OF HENRY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 165
 
 THE SON OF WILLIAM, 
 
 167 
 
 " Five thousand pounds of silver from my hoard," 
 the Conqueror replied. 
 
 And Henry, true to the " looking out for num- 
 ber-one policy " that was his rule of life, made 
 answer complainingly : 
 
 " But of what use is five thousand pounds of 
 silver, father, if I have no realm given me to 
 govern, no place in which to live ? " 
 
 " Be patient, son Henry, and trust in the Lord," 
 his father replied. " Let thine elders go before 
 thee, and perchance, one day, thou mayst be greater 
 than either." 
 
 " OFF POSTED HENRY FOR 'THE HOARD.'" 
 
 Off posted Henry to see that he got his five 
 thousand pounds of silver, good measure, before 
 some one sharper than he secured it ; and he, too,
 
 1 68 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 left his father to die alone. But as soon as the 
 silver was his, he hurried back again to Caen, the 
 only one of the three sons of the Conqueror to be 
 present at tfyat tragic funeral, where the great 
 captain was denied a grave until his son Henry had 
 paid to him who claimed the ground sixty shillings 
 fee. 
 
 With the money his father had given him, 
 shrewd young Henry bought of his " hard-up " 
 brother, Robert, a part of his Norman realm. 
 This gave him a home; but he spent the next ten 
 years in taking sides, first with one brother and 
 then with the other, in the perpetual quarrel they 
 kept up. He was lucky enough to be near at hand 
 when William the Red was murdered in the New 
 Forest, and at once he cried out : " I am English ! 
 I alone must be king." Then he hurried off to 
 Westminster and seized " the royal hoard "-or the 
 treasury as we should call it and acting up to the 
 proverb that possession is nine points of the law, 
 he had himself at once crowned King of England, 
 on the fifth of August, in the year 1 100. 
 
 He made, for his time, an excellent king. At 
 first he had to fight for his crown, but he was 
 clever and courageous, and "made himself solid" 
 with the English people and the English Church, 
 by marrying a Saxon princess, curbing the insolence 
 of the Norman lords, placing a Saxon prince at the
 
 169 "BROTHERLY LOVE" IN OLDEN TIMES.
 
 THE SON OF WILLIAM. I /I 
 
 head of the Church in England, and granting to 
 ;the people that " charter of liberties " that may 
 be said to have been the forerunner of our own 
 immortal "Declaration." 
 
 He fought his unlucky brother, Robert, and 
 conquered him ; he fought the King of France, 
 and defeated him ; he put down rebellion in Nor- 
 mandy, and made himself one of the boldest and 
 most powerful of European rulers. Scotland, 
 Wales, and Ireland admitted his " overlordship," 
 and for thirty-four years England was at peace be- 
 cause of the vigorous, statesman-like, and liberal 
 rule of Henry the Scholar, the son of the Con- 
 queror. 
 
 He was a vast improvement upon his red-faced, 
 hot-headed brother William, known as Rufus or 
 "the Red." He was, indeed, a worthy successor to 
 his father, the great William. 
 
 For it is worth your while to note this fact : 
 William the Conqueror was one of the world's 
 great men. He was a genius in leadership ; he 
 would have been a leader whenever and wherever 
 he had lived ; and though he seems to have in- 
 spired no love in his day or ours if we except his 
 historian, Mr. Freeman being as men said of him 
 when he reigned " very stark and harsh," neverthe- 
 less by his skill, his ability, his tact, and his un- 
 yielding will, he left a name that the world has
 
 1^2 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 never forgotten, and to which it adds the title of 
 the great, as it added it to the names of Alexander, 
 of Caesar, and of Charlemagne. 
 
 The conquest of England was William's oppor- 
 tunity. How wisely and courageously he took 
 advantage of the opportunity all the world knows. 
 
 While we pity the Saxon Harold, and heave the 
 sigh of sympathy for his misfortunes and the sad 
 tragedy of " Hasting's fatal day " as what is now 
 known as the Battle of Senlac has ever been popu- 
 larly called we need to remember that England 
 and America are not to regard the Norman con- 
 quest of England as a disaster or an evil, but rather 
 as the day that marked a mighty, forward step for 
 the English-speaking race. 
 
 William the Conqueror was more than a great 
 soldier ; he was a great statesman, and, apart from 
 what he did for England, it is well for American 
 boys and girls to note that William the Conqueror 
 was in a sense the founder of our own splendid 
 republic; for much of what is best in our Constitu- 
 tion sprang directly from the brain and hand of this 
 " stark, harsh man," William the Norman, the " man 
 of blood and iron " of eight centuries ago. 
 
 Henry the Scholar, the best and brightest of the 
 sons of the conqueror, has also a claim to greatness ; 
 he, too, like Edward, the son of Alfred, is over- 
 shadowed by his father's name. Indeed, it is
 
 THE SON OF WILLIAM. 175 
 
 pleasant to be able to link his name with that of 
 Edward, and trace his connection back to the 
 noble Alfred. 
 
 For he married a good and gentle Saxon princess, 
 who, on her mother's side, was a direct descendant 
 of Alfred the Great. So wise and kindly a woman 
 was she that men for eight hundred years have 
 spoken of her as " good queen Maud," and it is 
 safe to say that her influence and advice, in the 
 days when men scoffed at the influence of women 
 and spurned their advice, largely directed the heart 
 and mind of Henry, her husband, toward the bet- 
 tering and up-building of the new England that his 
 reign ushered in. 
 
 Of course, we could find many things in the life 
 of this able son of William the Conqueror that 
 would, to-day, seem cruel, ungentle, and evil. But 
 those were days when blood ran hot and men's 
 hands were quick to strike and their hearts were slow 
 to throb "with malice toward none, with charity for 
 all." It is, therefore, all the more delightful to think 
 that one of the three bad boys of William's quarrel- 
 some household became the king who, beyond all 
 others in those lawless days, stood as the champion 
 of law and order. 
 
 We can set down a good deal of this to the credit 
 of "good queen Maud" whose story under her 
 Saxon name of " Edith of Scotland" I have already
 
 176 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 set down for young readers in my records of cer- 
 tain " Historic Girls." But the most of Henry's 
 greatness was due to the strength of his own char- 
 acter and the breadth of his own mind. Mr. Free- 
 man tells us that, of the three sons of William, 
 Robert the Careless could not do justice if he 
 would, William Rufus the Brutal would not if he 
 could, but Henry the Clever both could and would. 
 
 Men called him "the Lion of Justice." He was 
 a despot ; but a despot who did good and not evil 
 toward his subjects. He was a tyrant ; but a tyrant 
 who permitted no titled follower to work injustice 
 upon the people of his realm. He was greedy, as 
 we can see by the way in which he "grabbed" 
 the silver his father promised, and, as soon as he 
 was able, "scooped in" the whole treasury ; but he 
 permitted no favorite to rob or cheat his people, 
 and was especially severe on the "Shylocks" and 
 counterfeiters, who, in those days, bled and fleeced 
 the people with the sanction of kings, who should 
 have been protectors. 
 
 " Good man was he, and mickle awe was of him. 
 Durst none man misdo with other on his time. 
 Peace he made for man and deer. Who so bare 
 his burthen, gold and silver, durst none man say 
 to him nought but good." 
 
 This is what, in the quaint language of his day, 
 men said of Henry the scholar king. It meant 
 that he was just and wise ; that his word was law ;
 
 THE SON OF WILLIAM. 179 
 
 for while he reigned " minstrels and maidens could 
 travel the land without fear " ; lawlessness and inso- 
 lence and injustice were "out of fashion" in Eng- 
 land. 
 
 It would seem that our "great men's sons" are 
 improving as we move along. Certainly Edward 
 and Henry are wonderful improvements upon 
 Commodus and Constantius, and some of the 
 worth and wisdom of the fathers appears to have 
 descended to their sons. 
 
 It was so, we know, in Edward's case. It seems 
 to have been so in Henry's. He proved himself, 
 in spite of the craft, the cruelty, and the crime that 
 would, once in a while, crop out in his character 
 and recall the three bad brothers of his "tough" 
 young days, worthy to be remembered as a great 
 man, even as his father has been remembered, and 
 he left an impress upon England's history not to be 
 forgotten or effaced. 
 
 He carried out all of his father's plans, from 
 conquest to union, thus fulfilling that father's 
 prophecy of the boy's certain supremacy. He, 
 indeed, even more than his mighty father, was 
 really " king of England," and he laid out the road- 
 way for England's future greatness along such 
 lines as William the Conqueror himself would have 
 chosen, had he been permitted to live and do the 
 work that this son of William wisely, if sometimes 
 sternly, carried out.
 
 X. 
 
 THE SON OF SALADIN. 
 
 (A.D. jsoo.J 
 
 A SWIFT-SAILING felucca came speeding 
 across the blue Mediterranean, and, almost 
 before it could cast anchor in the Bulak port, a 
 messenger sprang ashore, and was off like a flash, 
 headed for the palace of the sultan in Cairo. 
 
 Straight on he sped without stay or stop in, 
 through the city gate, on, past the great citadel 
 that crowned the lofty rock, on, past the carven 
 lion above the palace gate, until, in the Hall of 
 Columns, in the palace of El Muez, he bowed to 
 the floor in salaam, and delivered his message to a 
 tall, swarthy-faced, but sad-eyed and sedate Ara- 
 bian, whose robes of coarsest cloth scarcely marked 
 him for the great man he so surely was. For this 
 plainly robed and simple-mannered man was he to 
 whom kings and princes gave the title Melek el 
 Mansur, the "king victorious." He was sultan of 
 
 180
 
 THE SON OF SALADIN. 11 
 
 Egypt and Syria, king of Arabia, and prince of 
 Mesopotamia ; he was Joseph the son of Job, 
 called Salah-ed-deen, or " the safe one," and 
 known to all Europe of his day, as to all the 
 world of ours, as the great Saladin, the Saracen 
 lord of the East. 
 
 And this message to the Sultan Saladin, sent in 
 haste from Cyprus, told how another uprising of 
 Europe was to flood the East, to deliver Jesusalem 
 from the Moslem ; how it was to be led on by 
 Frederick, the Emperor of Germany, called the 
 Red Beard ; and how the kings of France and 
 England were to follow after with many princes, 
 nobles, knights, and fighting men. So great was 
 this rising, so determined its purpose, the message 
 said, that a tax had been laid on all the lords of 
 western Europe, either to join the crusade with 
 knights and men-at-arms, or to pay towards its 
 prosecution one-tenth of all their substance a tax 
 known by the name of him against whom the cru- 
 sade was preached : " the Saladin tenth." 
 
 In the Hall of Columns, in his palace at Cairo, 
 Saladin pondered over the message. His kingdom 
 was secure; Palestine was subjugated ; the Crescent 
 and not the Cross floated above Jerusalem ; he was 
 weary and wished for peace and rest. But peace 
 there could not be, if the three greatest rulers 
 of Christendom were to march against him. So he
 
 I&2 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 summoned his sons to a conference, and prepared 
 again for war. 
 
 "Speed to El Afdhal," Saladin said to the 
 kneeling courier, " and bid him join me quickly 
 if he would see the glory of another Tiberius." 
 
 The sons of Saladin were, in all, seventeen, but 
 of these only the three elder ones were his especial 
 helpers ; and of these three the second son, El 
 Afdhal, he to whom the fleet courier was despatched, 
 was the one upon whom Saladin most depended. 
 It was Afdhal who had fought beside his father that 
 bloody day at Tiberias, when, in the shadow of the 
 hill called the Horns of Hattin, the whole Christian 
 army was defeated and destroyed by the victorious 
 Saladin. And it was to him, and to the king's 
 brother, Seyf-ed-deen, known in history as Saphe- 
 din, that the chief commands were now to be given, 
 as the armies gathered in Syria and Palestine to 
 withstand the fresh onset from Christian Europe. 
 
 This was the famous Third Crusade, fought in 
 the years between 1190 and 1193. It gave new 
 glory to Saladin and was, from the outset, disas- 
 trous to the Crusaders. The red-bearded Emperor 
 of Germany was drowned on his way to the East, 
 and his great army melted away ; Philip of France, 
 like another French king we have heard of, simply 
 
 " Marched up the hill and then marched down again " ;
 
 THE SON OF SALADtN. '185 
 
 and Richard of England, a big bully miscalled a 
 noble knight, did but little save to bluster and 
 blunder ; he sneaked back without having even 
 seen Jerusalem, only to fall a prisoner into the 
 hands of Austria and nearly ruin his neglected 
 realm of England by stupidity, selfishness, and a 
 show of so-called chivalry. 
 
 Out of it all Saladin came with greater glory than 
 ever ; but it caused his death in 1 193, at the early 
 age of fifty-seven. Weakened by exposure, con- 
 tinual fighting, restlessness, and worry, he caught a 
 fever and died in Damascus the greatest Moslem 
 since Mohammed, the most noble, most just, most 
 fearless, and most famous of all the Saracen masters 
 of the East. 
 
 He united under one sovereignty all the Eastern 
 lands from the Nile to the Euphrates ; he built up 
 and beautified Cairo ; and, in the midst of war, had 
 ever thoughts of the peace and prosperity of his 
 kingdom. 
 
 His three elder sons divided his realm between 
 them. But they had neither the ability nor the 
 wisdom of their father, and were forever quarrelling 
 over their "rights." El Afdhal, on his father's 
 death, became Sultan of Damascus and Lord of 
 Syria and Palestine. But the warlike abilities he 
 had displayed under his father's guidance soon gave 
 place to that same idleness and love of luxury
 
 1 86 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 against which his father had so often warned 
 him. 
 
 How much the Sultan Saladin thought of the 
 future of his sons and his kingdom we may gather 
 from this wise and fatherly and patriotic letter of 
 advice sent to his son, when, just before Saladin's 
 death, the young prince was sent to try his hand 
 at governing a province : 
 
 " My son," said the wise Saladin, " you are about 
 to reign over states that I have bestowed upon you. 
 My infirmities give me reason to fear that I may 
 never see you again ; I recommend you, then, my 
 son, as my last command, to love and honor God, 
 who is the source of all good, and to observe the 
 precepts of his law ; for your welfare depends upon 
 it. Spare human blood, for fear it should fall upon 
 your own head ; for blood once shed never sleeps. 
 Endeavor to gain the hearts of your subjects ; ad- 
 minister justice, and be as careful of their interests 
 as of your own. . . . We are all mortal, O my 
 son ! Entertain, then, no malice, no hatred against 
 any one.* Be careful, above all things, to offend no- 
 body ; men only forget injuries when they have re- 
 venged them, whilst God grants us pardon for our 
 errors for a simple repentance ; for he is beneficent 
 and merciful." 
 
 * Does not this suggest President Lincoln's noble words in his second 
 inaugural speech : " With malice toward none, with charity for all."
 
 THE SON Of S A LA tit N. 187 
 
 At first Afdhal did try to remember his father's 
 good counsel, and sought to maintain the inheri- 
 tance his father had left him. But the Saracen lords 
 who had been his father's companions and captains 
 did not take kindly to the young sultan, and refused 
 to take the oath at Damascus, which pledged them 
 thus : " I swear to submit to the Sultan El-Melek 
 El-Afdhal ; to fight for his empire and states with 
 my life, my wealth, my sword, and my troops. I 
 swear to obey him in everything ; I devote myself 
 to him inwardly and outwardly, and I take God for 
 a witness of this engagement." 
 
 Afdhal was not Saladin ; he had neither the wis- 
 dom nor the will to win over the unfriendly lords, 
 and so he gave up trying. 
 
 The records speak of him as lazy and dissipated ; 
 but as, in the next sentence, they tell us that he de- 
 lighted in nothing but spending his time in listen- 
 ing to songs and making verses, one is inclined to 
 set down young Afdhal as perhaps not so bad as 
 he was painted. In his day and country the soldier 
 was more honored than the singer, and a do-noth- 
 ing, such as this young sultan seems to have been, 
 could scarcely have aroused the loyalty or com- 
 manded the respect that had been given to his 
 great father, the Sultan Saladin. 
 
 And yet it is a singular thing to note that very 
 many of the Saracen or Turkish sultans of those
 
 188 
 
 GREAT MEN'S 
 
 and succeeding days were what is called literary 
 men. They were skilled especially in poetry, and 
 were able writers in history and science. 
 
 A PARLEY BETWEEN THE HOSTILE BROTHERS. 
 
 But these were only counted as occupations for 
 the leisure moments of men of power and position. 
 When, therefore, one gave himself up entirely to 
 these literary pursuits, as did young Afdhal, and
 
 THE SON OF S A LA DIN. 189 
 
 neglected the affairs of his kingdom, all the sol- 
 diers and people objected, while those who were 
 ambitious for power were quickly led to rebellion. 
 
 This proved the case with Afdhal's supporters. 
 Those who had hoped to find in the son of Saladin 
 a soldier as brave, a master as vigorous, a states- 
 man as wise, a leader as victorious as his father, 
 did not long conceal their disappointment, nor 
 smother their discontent. Revolt has always been 
 easy in Eastern lands ; and rebellion speedily en- 
 sued. The hostile lords of this listless young 
 sultan of Syria sought the support of Afdhal's 
 older brother, the sultan of Egypt. Civil war fol- 
 lowed ; the brothers fought each other with vary, 
 ing success; the strife grew into a family feud that 
 threatened to break up the entire kingdom of 
 Saladin, until one day Uncle Saphedin stepped 
 between the brothers, smoothed over things, and 
 induced each one to retire into his respective 
 kingdom. 
 
 Then again did young Afdhal, who had been 
 awakened into action by this spur of civil war, 
 "brace up," as the saying is, for awhile, and try to 
 become a prince and a ruler. But he had no back- 
 bone, had young Afdhal. He soon grew tired of 
 action, and withdrew again into his shell. 
 
 This time, however, he gave himself up neither 
 to wine nor to music. He became very religious ;
 
 i go 
 
 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 he spent most of his time praying in the mosques, 
 or devoting himself to the most petty details and 
 practices of the Mohammedan service. It was 
 simply another form of dissipation the very kind 
 that Christ so protested against when he called the 
 scribes and pharisees of his day "hypocrites." 
 
 It was not at all the course for one to take whose 
 duty it was to be a vigorous ruler. Afdhal neg- 
 lected the needs of his country for the useless 
 
 NO PRAISE FOR AFDHAL. 
 
 services of the mosque ; again the people grum- 
 bled and rebellion was in the air. " Then," says 
 the record, " complaints against him were heard in 
 all quarters, and tongues that had been loud in his 
 praise, became silent." 
 
 Once again his restless brother, the sultan of 
 Egypt, began to stir up strife and dream of becom- 
 ing lord of Syria as well as of Egypt. Things 
 looked threatening again ; when suddenly that wise 
 old soldier, Uncle Saphedin, made up his mind to
 
 THE SON OF S A LA DIN. 19 1 
 
 settle both his objectionable nephews by taking 
 things into his own hands, and to save the vast 
 heritage of Saladin, his brother, by centering all 
 the power in himself. 
 
 This time the lazy young Afdhal did not recover 
 from the disgrace into which he had fallen. Driven 
 from one city to another he outlived his more war- 
 like brother, but wore out his days simply as the 
 tool of his Uncle Saphedin, who kept possession of 
 both Syria and Egypt, fought the Crusaders in the 
 Fourth and Sixth Crusades, and " ran " everything 
 to suit himself. 
 
 Afdhal died in exile and disgrace soon after the 
 year 1200, a failure simply because he lacked the 
 will power that makes men dare and do, and the 
 greatness that makes men see how, even when they 
 serve, they may sway. 
 
 The kingdom that Saladin had built up as the re- 
 sult of his ambition, his energy, his wisdom, and 
 his ability soon fell asunder after the death of his 
 brother, the able usurper Saphedin. It was finally 
 overthrown by the Tartars from the East and the 
 fierce soldiers of the sultans themselves. 
 
 All of which proves the wisdom of that Arabian 
 historian of the days of this same unlucky son of 
 Saladin, when he declared : " The greater part of 
 the founders of empires have not been able to leave 
 them to their posterity."
 
 XI. 
 
 THE SON OF DANTE. 
 
 (A.D. 
 
 T3EFORE a well-filled counter in a bookshop 
 JJ of Florence, near to the Ponte Vecchio, or 
 Bridge of the Goldsmiths, stood a man of six and 
 thirty, poring over a manuscript that was yellow 
 with age, while between his knees was thrust 
 another, held as if in reserve when the first manu- 
 script should have been thumbed through. 
 
 He was a slightly built man, of medium height, 
 
 The p^nte \/eccKio, 
 
 long of face and 
 large of jaw, with an 
 eagle-beaked nose, 
 a protruding under 
 lip; large,intent,and 
 serious eyes. His 
 shoulders had the slight stoop of the scholar ; his 
 face was the olive-brown of Italy; his hair and 
 beard were thick and golden.
 
 THE SON OF DANTE. 193 
 
 In the doorway of the shop, with eager head 
 thrust out between the door-filling bodies of the 
 shopman and his noisy apprentice, a small boy of 
 seven was watching the passing pageant. 
 
 For, along this thronged and huzzaing street, to 
 the sound of martial music, the cheers of watching 
 thousands, and the regular tramp, tramp, tramp, of 
 mail-clad men, passed the glittering procession es- 
 corting, from the great San Gallo gate to the 
 Palace of the Signiory, the French Prince, Charles 
 of Valois, who, with a brilliant following, was com- 
 ing, at the command of the Pope, to establish so 
 he declared peace in beautiful Florence between 
 the Blacks and the Whites. 
 
 It was in the opening year of the fourteenth 
 century, in November, 1301, that Prince Charles 
 of Valois rode thus into welcoming Florence. The 
 fair city on the Arno was feud-ridden and faction- 
 rent. For years it had been tossed and torn 
 between two political parties of its citizens the 
 Blacks, who were the aristocratic nobles and wished 
 all the power, and the Whites, who were the party 
 of the people and wished for a government by the 
 people. 
 
 In this year of 1301 the Whites were in power, 
 and this absorbed scholar who stood in the book- 
 shop poring over an old manuscript, oblivious of 
 the passing show and glitter without, was a promi-
 
 194 
 
 GREA T MEN'S SONS. 
 
 nent politician of the White party, an alderman of 
 the city, and a superintendent of construction in 
 the Street Department of Florence. 
 
 He had been a soldier and a fighter before he 
 went into politics ; but, more than soldier, more 
 
 " A BRIGHT AND GENTLE BOY WAS THE SON OF DANTE." 
 
 than politician, more than office-holder, he was a 
 poet. And it is as poet that the world knows him. 
 For this absorbed reader in the Florentine book- 
 shop, who should have been at the Palace of the 
 Signiory with the other city officials, welcoming 
 the French prince, was Messer Durante degli 
 Alighieri, known to his fellow-townsmen and to all
 
 195 
 
 PRINCE CHARLES OF VALOIS ROUE INTO FLORENCE.
 
 THE SOM OP DANTE. IqJ 
 
 the world since his day as Dante, the greatest 
 of Italian poets, and one of the world's greatest 
 as well. 
 
 And the s lall Italian seven-year-old who, with 
 his head thrust out at the open doorway, was 
 watching the passing procession, as oblivious of his 
 father as his father was of him, was young Pietro 
 (or Peter) Alighieri, the son of Dante. 
 
 The Alighieris lived in a large and well furnished 
 house on Race Street, in the Sixth Ward of Flor- 
 ence, and, as the son of one of the city's prominent 
 men, the little Peter had a pleasant and comfort- 
 able life during his earlier years. But bad times 
 came all too soon, and the four little Alighieris, of 
 whom Peter was the eldest, knew what worry and 
 trouble and even privation were, long before they 
 got into their teens. 
 
 For Prince Charles of Valois, instead of making 
 peace between the Blacks and the Whites, acted 
 solely in the interests of the aristocratic nobles, the 
 tyrants of the people ; and before the year 1301 had 
 closed, the White party was overthrown ; fighting, 
 murder, and pillage rent the betrayed city, until 
 finally, in January, 1302, the leading men of the 
 White party were driven out of Florence. 
 
 Among the six hundred citizens thus exiled was 
 Dante. He never saw his beloved Florence or 
 his home again. A wanderer among the towns of
 
 198 
 
 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 Northern Italy, banished and with a price set upon 
 his head, he died finally at Ravenna, in the year 
 1321, at the age of fifty-six, a broken, disappointed, 
 white-haired man, old before his time. 
 
 But out of that exile, wandering, and disappoint- 
 ment came the only thing by which Dante is re- 
 
 THE MOB AT DANTE S HOME. 
 
 membered The Divine Comedy, which made his 
 name immortal ; that marvellous poem which tells 
 the real history of a tempted, purified, and tri- 
 umphant human soul, and stands, so Lowell says, 
 as a monument on the boundary line between the 
 ancient and modern.
 
 THE so AT OF DANTE. 199 
 
 We get but few glimpses of Peter the son of 
 Dante, but those glimpses show us a bright and 
 gentle boy, a good son and brother, and one who 
 grew to admire and then to reverence the genius of 
 the sad-faced, disappointed father, who, it is to be 
 feared, loved his " dear Florence " more than his 
 family, and was so lost, first in the brooding over 
 his unjust persecution and then in the greatness of 
 the work of his brain, that he had but little to say 
 to either wife or children, though they seem to have 
 been loyal and devoted to him. 
 
 When Peter was eight years old, a mob of the 
 Black party burst into his home on Race Street, 
 from which his father had been driven into exile ; 
 then they plundered and burned it. Peter and his 
 mother, Monna Gemma, heard of what was com- 
 ing and hastily gathered together certain valuables, 
 papers, and manuscripts. These they hurried into 
 chests and boxes just in time, and hid them in 
 a safe place. 
 
 Five years went by and poor Monna Gemma 
 had a hard time to get along. Her husband was a 
 wanderer and almost a beggar ; her boys and girls 
 were growing up in Florence, openly pointed out as 
 the children of a criminal and a " boodler," and she 
 had barely money enough to feed and educate 
 them. 
 
 In 1307, when Peter was nearly thirteen, affairs
 
 2OO GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 were so bad with his mother that she hardly knew 
 what to do, and as, by that time, party hatreds had 
 cooled a little, she thought she would try to get 
 back some of Dante's property which the vic- 
 torious Blacks had confiscated. So she and Peter 
 hunted up the chests they had hidden away, and 
 while searching through them for certain papers 
 that Monna Gemma needed to prove her property, 
 they came across a manuscript poem by Dante. 
 Thinking it might be of value, they showed it to 
 a friend, who was so struck by it that he prevailed 
 upon them to send it to Dante, who was then in 
 exile at the court of one of the princes of Northern 
 Italy. 
 
 It was a lucky " find." It was the first seven 
 cantos of the " Inferno," the opening part of the 
 immortal Divine Comedy. Thus was the great 
 book saved ; for Dante thought these cantos lost, 
 and he might never have gone on with the poem but 
 for the forethought and devotion of his wife and 
 son. 
 
 Soon after this there came to Florence a letter 
 in the long, thin handwriting of Dante bidding 
 young Peter come to him at Padua, where was a 
 great school in which the boy could be educated. 
 
 So to his father at Padua, in 1306, the son of 
 Dante went, and under his father's care " finished " 
 his education. He was a good and conscientious
 
 201 PETER AND HIS MOTHER HIDING THE MANUSCRIPTS.
 
 THE SON OF DANTE. 203 
 
 scholar, and when his college life was completed he 
 became a successful lawyer, receiving gifts and 
 openings from the nobles who had befriended his 
 father. Finally, he settled in Verona and became 
 a man of " party and prominence." 
 
 DANTE. 
 
 (Bronze bust, fifteenth century.) 
 
 It was while living with his son Peter, at Verona, 
 that Dante, in the year 1316, had his only chance 
 to return to his beloved Florence. The party of 
 the Blacks was so firmly fixed in power that they 
 no longer feared the Whites ; so they sent word 
 to the exiles throughout Italy that Florence would
 
 204 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 receive them again as citizens, if they would first 
 pay a fine and then march in procession to the 
 Church of St. John to do penance for their sins, 
 with paper fool's-caps on their heads and lighted 
 candles in their hands. 
 
 Some of the exiles did thus humble themselves 
 in order to get back to their home once more. Not 
 so Dante. None loved fair Florence more passion- 
 ately than he ; but, as he told his son, the young 
 lawyer of Verona, and as he wrote to his friends in 
 Florence : " This is not the way for me to return 
 to my country. If any other way can be discov- 
 ered which does not touch the fame of Dante and 
 his honor, I will gladly accept it. But, if by no 
 such way Florence is to be entered, then Florence 
 I will never enter. And what if I do not ? Can I 
 not see the sun and stars everywhere ? Can I not 
 study God's truth anywhere beneath his Heaven ? 
 And bread, I trust, will never fail me." 
 
 So he lived and died an exile from Florence, 
 rather than return in dishonor. And bread never 
 failed him. Great princes patronized and be- 
 friended him ; his son Peter looked carefully and 
 lovingly after him, and his last years were given up 
 to study, to freedom and the good of Italy, and to 
 his great poem. 
 
 He died at Ravenna on the fourteenth of Sep- 
 tember, in the year 1321, and Florence, which
 
 THE SON OF DANTE. 
 
 205 
 
 denied him a home and sought to murder and to 
 disgrace him, has ever since vainly striven to 
 secure the bones of its greatest citizen and most 
 loving son. Ravenna, which befriended and buried 
 him, has never given them up. 
 
 DANTE'S MONUMENT IN RAVENNA. 
 
 Pietro, or Peter, the son of Dante, lived to 
 attain honors and position in Verona. He was a 
 scholar as well as a lawyer ; and, after his father's
 
 206 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 death, he published a commentary or study of that 
 father's mighty poem, The Divine Comedy. 
 
 He died in Verona in 1364 ; and to-day, through 
 the line of his daughter's sons and successors, the 
 blood of Dante still flows in the veins of one of 
 Italy's noble families the house of Sarego-Alighi- 
 eri of Verona. 
 
 The life of this son of Dante was doubtless 
 brighter and more successful than was that of his 
 famous but disappointed father, and we are glad to 
 remember him as a faithful and loving son. As 
 the world counts success, Dante's life was a failure ; 
 but out of that failure came a work that has made 
 his name immortal. So there is to-day but one 
 Dante that the world now remembers ; and the son 
 of Dante, gentle, loving, and honorable though he 
 was, lives in the world's knowledge simply because 
 he was his father's son.
 
 XII. 
 
 THE SON OF TAMERLANE. 
 
 (A.D. 1404.) 
 
 IT is dangerous to play games with despots. But 
 Timur the Tartar, better known as Tamerlane, 
 was an inveterate chess-player who, though he 
 was the world's greatest despot, was yet willing to 
 be beaten at his favorite game. 
 
 He looked a grizzled, lean, and tough old fellow 
 of seventy as he sat in his enamelled room of yel- 
 low, blue, and gold mosaic, in his great and gor- 
 geous palace at Samarkand. And, indeed, as he sat 
 there, playing chess with his youngest son, the 
 Shah Rokh, he seemed more intent on guarding 
 his castles and saving his pawns than on the mes- 
 sage a patient secretary stood awaiting orders to 
 deliver for it was death to disturb the Emperor's 
 game of chess. 
 
 The game was finished at last. The Shah Rokh 
 
 207
 
 208 GREA T MEN'S SOWS. 
 
 was victor. With a hearty laugh the old warrior 
 acknowledged himself beaten. Pushing aside the 
 chess-board with its one hundred and thirty squares 
 and fifty-six chessmen (for Tamerlane played a 
 special game of chess of his own devising in which 
 the customary squares and pieces were more than 
 doubled), the great Tartar turned to the silent and 
 patient secretary and said : " Speak now ; what is 
 your message ? " 
 
 "An embassy with gifts, O Lord of the Age, 
 from the King of the West," the secretary replied. 
 
 " It is but another," said the Emperor ; " but see 
 you, son Rokh, that the messenger of the King of 
 the West is welcomed. Even the smallest of fish, 
 you know, have their place in the great ocean." 
 
 It was the year 1404, and in all the world there 
 was no greater conqueror, no mightier monarch 
 than this lean old Tartar who sat in his splendid 
 palace at Samarkand, playing chess with his son. 
 He was styled the Great Wolf, the Lord of the 
 Age, the Conqueror of the World. And these 
 titles very nearly fitted Timur Lane (that is, Timur 
 the Lame, and hence the Tamerlane, by which he 
 is known to us) ; for he was lord and conqueror, 
 from the great wall of China to the Mediterranean, 
 and from the bleak steppes of Siberia to the Ganges 
 and the Nile ; seven and twenty kings had surren- 
 dered their crowns into his hand, and, after sixty
 
 THE SON OF TAMERLANE. 
 
 209 
 
 years of effort and of conquest, the boy who had 
 roamed the desert a homeless wanderer and gazed 
 with wonder upon the walls of princely Samarkand, 
 was now the mightiest man of his time, the enlarger 
 and beautifier of Samarkand, the conqueror who 
 never knew defeat, the despot who almost made 
 true the motto with which he started on his career 
 of conquest : " There is but one God in heaven, 
 and there shall be but one king on earth." 
 
 " MY SON IS MARKED FOR LEADERSHIP," SAID TAMERLANE. 
 
 The embassy which the Shah Rokh, the young- 
 est son of Tamerlane, was charged to royally 
 receive and bring before his father, was sent to
 
 210 GREAT MEN S SONS. 
 
 Tamerlane by Henry, the King of Castile, great- 
 grandfather of that Queen Isabella who, ninety 
 years after, sent Columbus westward on a search 
 for that same Cathay that King Henry's embassy 
 went to the East to find. 
 
 It was a glittering city and a gorgeous court into 
 which young Prince Rokh introduced the Spanish 
 ambassadors. To beautify his royal city of Samar- 
 kand, the great conqueror had lavished upon it the 
 spoils of the empires he had overthrown and the 
 cities he had plundered. Palaces, mosques, and gar- 
 dens adorned it everywhere, and in his royal palace 
 on the hill, glittering 
 
 " With barbaric pearls and gold," 
 
 the Emperor received these men of the West, in- 
 troduced by his son, the Prince Rokh. 
 
 Cross-legged upon an embroidered carpet strewn 
 with cushions of silk sat the scarred old kinq-, robed 
 
 o 
 
 in rich satin and wearing upon his head a lofty 
 snow-white turban, ringed with gems, and bearing 
 in its front a great and glowing ruby. 
 
 And yet, because of some slip in the etiquette of 
 that barbaric court which his son, the Shah Rokh, 
 had carelessly or wilfully permitted, this despotic 
 old father, who did not grumble if he were beaten at 
 chess, waxed, we are told, exceeding wroth, and poor 
 Prince Rokh was lugged off into the punishment
 
 THE SON OF TAMERLANE. 211 
 
 chamber, turned upside down, and bastinadoed until 
 his princely feet stung and smarted. This was by 
 command of his punctilious old father, who would 
 order his sons and grandsons to be bastinadoed like 
 any slave at the least lapse from duty, after which 
 they were honored and trusted again. 
 
 Tamerlane took a two months' vacation from war 
 the first in nearly fifty years and then marched 
 eastward to attempt his greatest undertaking the 
 conquest of China. But long before he could 
 reach the great wall of China, at a place called 
 Otrar, to the north of the city of Tashkend, which 
 you can find upon your map of Siberia or Turkes- 
 tan, the old conqueror died a victim to too much 
 ice-water. 
 
 So China escaped the heavy hand of Tamerlane 
 
 the man of whom it has been written that "he 
 
 shed more blood and caused more misery than any 
 
 other human being who was ever born upon the 
 
 face of the earth." 
 
 And yet, though a conqueror and a despot, 
 Tamerlane was wise and far-seeing, and aimed to 
 be just and generous. When he found his end 
 was near, so the story goes, he called to his bedside 
 the sons who were in his camp. And to the eldest 
 he said : 
 
 " My son, love justice ; administer it, as well 
 unto the poor as unto the great. This is your
 
 212 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 duty. Remember, too, that the weapons you bear 
 in your hands are but to make execution of your 
 justice ; for that cause, therefore, make sure that 
 the wars you begin are justly enterprised ; then 
 will they have happy success. Unto your friends, 
 my son, be gentle and courteous ; unto your ene- 
 mies, be terrible. But if they demand peace of 
 you, do not in any case refuse it. Do justice, my 
 son, for the love of your people." 
 
 To his other sons he said : " Love your brother, 
 and be subject unto him ; for he is the head." 
 
 But, as he blessed his boys, after the old patri- 
 archal custom of the East, and laid his hand upon 
 the head of each, he hesitated when he came to the 
 blessing of his youngest son, the Shah Rokh. 
 Then, instead of laying his hand upon the head of 
 the prince, he placed it beneath his chin and lifted 
 his head up, thus signifying, so the old records 
 assure us, that while his other sons should be sub- 
 ject to their elder brother, this one, the youngest of 
 them all, should lift his head in rebellion, and tri- 
 umph against his brother. And so the sequel proved. 
 
 That shrewd old conqueror of men, the Emperor 
 Tamerlane, seems always to have entertained strong 
 opinions as to the ambition of this youngest of his 
 sons, the Prince (or Shah) Rokh ; he repeatedly de- 
 clared that the young fellow had more of his father's 
 blood in him than all the rest of his brothers.
 
 THE SON OF TAMERLANE. 21$ 
 
 The story goes that when Prince Rokh was a 
 little fellow, Tamerlane, returning from one of his 
 wars, desired to see his youngest son. The Shah 
 Rokh was then about seven years old, and when 
 the attendants brought him to his father the old 
 warrior was very angry at the way they had rigged 
 the child out. 
 
 " Do they mean to make a woman of you, boy ?" 
 he cried. " Take off these robes and dress him as 
 a boy should dress who must risk all and bear all." 
 
 Then he hung a bow about the boy's neck and 
 bade his attendants never to allow the prince to 
 wear anything upon his head ; for, said he, "they 
 who from their birth are called unto sovereignty, 
 should be used both unto cold and heat, and should 
 be exercised in arms betimes not brought up 
 delicately and easily." 
 
 " All that may come in time, O Wolf-Lord ! " 
 one of the prince's attendants was bold enough to 
 reply ; "the Shah Rokh is yet of tender years." 
 
 The old Emperor turned savagely. " Out upon 
 you !" he cried ; " the years of youth are never too 
 tender for the test of courage. Look you ; this 
 prince, my son, is marked for mastership. If he 
 be not born to be strong in arms he will not be 
 worthy to succeed me ; for he that is to preserve my 
 empire, as this my son will do, must not be a weak- 
 ling nor effeminate."
 
 2l6 GREAT MEN'S SONS, 
 
 And the old Emperor's prophecy came true. 
 For the Shah Rokh, of all his sons, was the only 
 one who did succeed him and who sought to pre- 
 serve his empire. 
 
 After the death of Tamerlane in the camp at 
 Otrar, his sons and his grandsons fell to fighting 
 over the great empire that was their inheritance. 
 But only the Shah Rokh could uphold and preserve 
 his heritage with glory. 
 
 He beautified Samarkand. Schools and colleges, 
 mosques and palaces were added to those already 
 built in that gorgeous and barbaric capital, and, 
 above the remains of his mighty father he reared a 
 splendid tomb the Gur-Emir, whose enamelled 
 dome, after all these centuries of desolation and 
 decay, is still the first object to catch the stranger's 
 eye, as he approaches the ruined city of Samarkand. 
 
 The Shah Rokh was as wise and enlightened a 
 prince as he was an ambitious and intrepid warrior, 
 but both he and his son, the literature-loving U lug- 
 Beg, or Governor Ulug (who built a college and an 
 observatory -in Samarkand), seem to have been 
 unable to live up to the maxim of the wise old con- 
 queror, Tamerlane : "The prince who would gov- 
 ern successfully, must learn to put the foot of 
 courage into the stirrup of patience." 
 
 It was because of this impatience, and because, 
 as has been well explained by Gibbon, " to reign
 
 THE SON OF TAMERLANE. 2 1/ 
 
 rather than to govern, was the ambition of Tam- 
 erlane's children and grandchildren the enemies 
 of each other and of the people," that Tamerlane's 
 vast empire went to pieces, and that even the wise 
 and brave Shah Rokh, the youngest and cleverest 
 
 "THEY FOUGHT AND QUARRELLED OVER THEIR MIGHTY INHERITANCE." 
 
 of the sons of Tamerlane, could not keep his pos- 
 sessions intact. Tamerlane, as the boys of to-day 
 would say, " never got rattled " ; therefore, he never 
 lost a battle nor failed to gain his ends. But his 
 sons and his grandsons were always " in a fix." 
 They fought and quarrelled over their mighty in- 
 heritance ; piece by piece, province by province, it 
 slipped from their grasp, until, a hundred years after 
 the death of Tamerlane, the Siberian Tartars, or 
 Uzbeks, as they were called, invaded what was
 
 2l8 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 left of his domain and drove his descendants from 
 Samarkand. 
 
 Of all the thirty-six sons and grandsons of Tam- 
 erlane, the Shah Rokh is the only one who has been 
 remembered or finds special record in history. One 
 of his descendants saved the name from utter ex- 
 tinction by going into the business of conquest on 
 his own hook in India, and became famous as " the 
 Great Mogul." This was, however, but a temporary 
 flash after the fireworks were over ; and the power 
 of the man who, in his day, had been the greatest 
 conqueror the world has ever seen, crumbled into a 
 ruin which even the wisdom and energy of the 
 brave son of Tamerlane could do nothing to avert. 
 
 There is, at least, this to be said of the Shah 
 Rokh, bearing upon an especial study of great 
 men's sons. He did inherit a portion of his 
 father's courage and ability ; he did not " peter 
 out," as did so many sons of despots and leaders ; 
 certainly, he did not create so much misery or 
 cause so many heartaches as his father the con- 
 queror, of whom it is said that his maxim was never 
 to repent and never to regret. 
 
 That Tamerlane rightly assumes a place among 
 the great men of the world no student of history will 
 deny. And yet I am surprised at the ignorance re- 
 specting him displayed by very many well-read peo- 
 ple, to say nothing of certain bright boys and girls. 
 " Tamerlane ? why, who was Tamerlane ? " I have
 
 THE SON OF TAMERLANE. 21$ 
 
 been asked, or, " What ! do you call him a great 
 man ? " Others profess to see nothing worthy to 
 be called greatness in a red-handed old Tartar 
 butcher who made skull-pyramids after every vic- 
 tory and exhibited the Turkish Sultan, Bajazet, in 
 a cage. 
 
 As to the fact, let me first assure you that Tam- 
 erlane was a great man. For, if success implies 
 ability, and ability intelligence, and intelligence 
 genius, and genius greatness, then was Tamerlane 
 great, for all these qualities he possessed. No 
 greater conqueror of men or nations ever lived ; 
 not Alexander nor Caesar nor Charlemagne nor 
 Napoleon, it has been truthfully asserted, " ever 
 won by the sword so large a portion of the globe, 
 or ruled over so many myriads of subjugated fel- 
 low-creatures." 
 
 And yet Tamerlane was not alone a bloody con- 
 queror. He was a statesman, a politician, a law- 
 giver, a financier, a leader and ruler of men. His 
 soldiers were under such discipline, and were yet 
 so blindly devoted to their master, that they were 
 ready to lay down their lives at his bidding, or, 
 harder yet, to abstain from plunder in the hour of 
 victory, or, hardest of all, give up without a mur. 
 mur the spoils they had stripped from a vanquished 
 foeman. His cruelty was policy rather than fe- 
 rocity, and his pyramids of human skulls, reared
 
 220 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 before the gates of every conquered city, was 
 rather to terrify his enemies than to gratify his 
 love of blood. 
 
 But Tamerlane's greatness was won through 
 blood and tears ; his son, the Shah Rokh, was of 
 gentler and more merciful strain. Though a 
 valiant soldier, he was no leader of men as his 
 father had been, and he rested content with an 
 abridged sovereignty and a less terror-inspiring 
 name. He was a patron of learning rather than of 
 arms ; and though he fought valiantly to defend his 
 inheritance, he thought more of beautifying his 
 own gorgeous capital than of destroying others, 
 and found more pleasure in building a college than 
 in rearing into a pyramid the severed heads of his 
 enemies. 
 
 After all, I think the Shah Rokh, though not a 
 great man, was a more comfortable man than his 
 mighty and terrible father. For, though his name 
 is well-nigh forgotten, it is nobler to be forgotten 
 for virtues than remembered for crimes.
 
 XIII. 
 
 THE SON OF COLUMBUS. 
 (A.D. 1492.) 
 
 IT was a day of excitement in Barcelona. Every 
 boy and girl was early astir, and, from the 
 Roman columns on Paradise Street to the wave-wet 
 breakwater on the beach, the moving throngs were 
 constantly on the watch. For the old Mediter- 
 ranean city that had opened its gates to Cartha- 
 ginian and Roman, to Barbarian and Moor, to 
 Frenchman and Spaniard, now prepared to wel- 
 come the Italian adventurer who, sailing away upon 
 the Sea of Darkness, had returned to lay the gift 
 of a new world at the feet of the king and queen 
 of Spain. 
 
 With a flourish of trumpets, through the Tarra- 
 gona gate and up Anchor Street, came the proces- 
 sion as queer a parade as ever the land of Spain 
 had seen. 
 
 221
 
 222 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 Behind the trumpeters and the Barcelona police, 
 or civic guard, walked six dusky, half-naked men, 
 decked with brilliant feathers and glittering with 
 disks and chains of gold. Following them came a 
 long line of porters laden with "the marvels of the 
 Indies" fruits and flowers and birds of gorgeous 
 plumage, skins of strange beasts, spice plants, 
 golden ornaments, and all the rare and curious 
 spoils of the new-found lands beyond the setting 
 sun. 
 
 Then, surrounded by a glittering retinue of the 
 knights and nobles of Spain, mounted on horse- 
 back and dressed like a grandee of the realm, rode 
 the man to whom all the honor and all the glory of 
 this day of pageant were due Don Cristobal 
 Colon, Viceroy of the Indies and Admiral of the 
 Ocean Seas the daring, persistent, and remark- 
 able man known to us simply as Christopher Co- 
 lumbus, the discoverer of America. 
 
 Up the street, thronged round about by the 
 welcoming, shouting people, the queer procession 
 moved until, at the old palace of the Moorish kings, 
 it passed in review before a haughty, red-faced 
 man and a graceful, red-haired woman, seated be- 
 neath a canopy of brocaded gold Ferdinand and 
 Isabella, King and Queen of Spain. 
 
 Grouped about these shrewd and energetic mon- 
 archs who had driven the Moors from Spain,
 
 THE SON OF COLUMBUS. 22$ 
 
 harried the Jews and other folk who did not go to 
 their church, and grudgingly consented to an enter- 
 prise that brought them glory and a vast, new 
 empire were the lords and ladies and high digni- 
 taries of their glittering court ; beside them was 
 seated a manly young fellow of fifteen, the hope of 
 their realm, their only son, Prince Juan (or John), 
 the heir to their joint thrones of Castile and 
 Aragon. 
 
 Behind the chair of the young prince stood a 
 boy of nearly the same age. He was the special 
 attendant and page of Prince John, and, in these 
 brilliant festivities, he seemed almost as much a 
 figure of interest to the boys and girls of Barcelona 
 as was the Admiral himself; almost as much as the 
 six " Indians" in the parade. For this bright-look- 
 ing boy of fourteen, page to Prince John and a 
 member of his " play " court, was Diego, the son 
 of Columbus. 
 
 Already had this boy's life been an eventful one. 
 Born in one of the Azore Islands, the son of a wan- 
 dering Italian map-peddler, Diego Columbus had 
 been the companion of his father's wanderings 
 when, with the dream of discovery fastened upon 
 him, Columbus left his island home and sought the 
 assistance of kings and princes to enable him to 
 make his dream come true. 
 
 Indeed, the story of this boy, little Jimmy Dove
 
 224 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 for thus can his name of Dieofo Columbus be 
 
 o 
 
 turned into English reads almost like a Vomance. 
 When he was born, in the year 1479, m tne town of 
 Porto Santo in the Azore Islands, his father was a 
 tramp sailor and map-peddler, finding it hard work 
 to scrape up a living. When the boy Diego was 
 four years old, things were going even harder with 
 his one-ideaed father, and the boy was taken to 
 Spain and left with his aunt his mother's sister, 
 who lived in the little town of Huelva and was 
 named Muliar. 
 
 This town of Huelva where Aunt Muliar lived 
 and where Diego spent the most of his early boy- 
 hood, is an old-time seaport of southwestern Spain. 
 It lies just across the bay from Palos, the port from 
 which Columbus sailed away to the westward when 
 his boy Diego was about fourteen. 
 
 It is the same old place that you read of in the 
 Bible under the name of Tarshish, and it has been 
 a shipping port for the copper of southern Spain for 
 ages. It is a low-built, white town with the sea at 
 its feet, a long plain behind it, and, off in the dis- 
 tance, the purple hills of Andalusia. 
 
 The boy Diego played on the wharves, fished in 
 the river and the bay, wandered off into the sunny 
 Vega or great plain, and lived the lazy, quiet life of 
 a boy of southern Spain, with never a pesos in his 
 pocket to spend if indeed he had even a pocket,
 
 CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 
 
 225 (From the portrait in the Marine Museum at Madrid.)
 
 THE SON OF COLUMBUS. 22/ 
 
 and with but few clothes on his brown little back 
 and legs. 
 
 Diego lived with his aunt at Huelva until the 
 autumn of 1491, when his father, returning from an 
 unsuccessful attempt to interest the king and queen 
 
 FROM THE WINDOW OF LA RABIDA. 
 
 (Showing the country in which Diego Columbus played as a boy.) 
 
 of Spain in his great scheme of western discovery, 
 decided to leave Spain and seek recognition in 
 France. 
 
 He determined to take Diego with him. The 
 boy was now nearly twelve years old and could be
 
 228 GREA T MEN'S SONS. 
 
 both a help and a companion to his discouraged 
 father. 
 
 Together they set out from Huelva, after bidding 
 good-by to Aunt Muliar. As they were on their 
 way to Seville and Cordova, they passed the gate 
 of the Franciscan monastery of La Rabida, a mile 
 and a half from Palos. Diego was thirsty and asked 
 for a drink of water. 
 
 That drink of water probably led to the discov- 
 ery of America ; for the hospitable monks of La 
 Rabida gave the little fellow both bread and water, 
 and, while talking with his father, they became 
 interested in the story of his fruitless efforts. 
 
 They invited the tramping father and son to 
 spend the night at La Rabida, and the prior or head 
 of the convent, whose name was Juan Perez, grew 
 so interested in the schemes of Columbus that he 
 invited certain friends to meet and talk with him. 
 Then Perez, the prior, posted off to see Queen 
 Isabella himself, and so interested her in the plan, 
 that he brought back a gift of money for Columbus 
 and an invitation to visit the queen and explain his 
 plans. 
 
 So boy Diego got a new suit of clothes, and 
 when his father set out for the Spanish camp at 
 Cordova, where Ferdinand and Isabella were fight- 
 ing the Moors, Diego was left behind at the con- 
 vent of La Rabida.
 
 THE SON OF COLUMBUS. 23 I 
 
 Columbus saw the queen ; he interested her in his 
 belief as to the possibility of finding rich countries 
 by sailing to the west ; but he demanded so great a 
 share for himself in case of his success that, once 
 more, his request for aid was denied, and, sadly 
 enough, he turned back to join his boy at La 
 Rabida and then leave Spain forever. 
 
 But, as you all know, Queen Isabella changed 
 her mind ; she decided to agree to the demands of 
 Columbus, and sent a galloping courier after him to 
 bring him back to court. The courier overtook 
 Columbus on the picturesque Bridge of Pines, six 
 miles from Cordova. 
 
 The adventurer turned again and rode back to 
 Cordova. There he made his bargain with Queen 
 Isabella, and the whole current of his life was 
 changed. 
 
 It was changed also for little Diego. For when 
 his father set sail from Palos with his three crazy 
 little ships to cross the western ocean, young Diego 
 had become a very important young gentlemen. 
 For Queen Isabella took such a fancy to the boy 
 that she appointed him page to her own son, the 
 young Prince Juan, a boy about Diego's age. 
 
 This appointment was made on the eighth of 
 May, 1492. Four days later his father bade Diego 
 good-by, and went to Palos to get ready for his 
 voyage.
 
 232 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 That famous voyage, as you know, was begun 
 on the third of August. At that time Diego was 
 a busy young page of the court, feeling very grand 
 no doubt that his father was Admiral and Don, 
 and that he himself was to be Don Diego when he 
 became a man. It was, indeed, quite a change for 
 the ragged little street boy of Huelva and the 
 thirsty little tramp of La Rabida. 
 
 But, as I have assured you, he felt even more 
 grand on that eventful day when, at the palace at 
 Barcelona, his father was received in such state and 
 ceremony by the king and queen, bringing to them 
 all the marvellous things he had found in the strange 
 lands over the sea, and was graciously invited to sit 
 in their presence " as grand as the king himself," 
 no doubt young Diego boasted and tell them the 
 story of his adventures and discoveries. 
 
 Perhaps young Diego felt prouder yet next day, as 
 he rode behind Prince Juan, and watched his gray- 
 haired, majestic-looking father, Columbus the Ad- 
 miral, riding through the streets of Barcelona, with 
 King Ferdinand on one side and Prince Juan on the 
 other, while all the people stared and applauded 
 and said : " See ; there is the man who has found 
 a new way to the Indies. Is not he lucky? And 
 there is his son." 
 
 The boy Diego had even more share in this 
 kingly favor than even he imagined at the time.
 
 ^5 
 
 I
 
 THE SON OF COLUMBUS. 23$ 
 
 For Ferdinand and Isabella agreed that the titles 
 granted to Columbus should descend to his son. 
 They ordered that the Admiral, too, should have 
 a coat-of-arms like any great lord or grandee in 
 proof of his nobility, and this coat-of-arms was also 
 to descend to his son. 
 
 You may be sure that Columbus shared his glory 
 with his boy, for the old man was always very fond 
 of his son. Then he sailed away on a second voy- 
 age, and Diego resumed his duties as a page to the 
 prince. 
 
 It was a fine schooling in good manners that 
 Diego Columbus received as page to Prince John. 
 The court of Spain was a brilliant one. Its 
 successes over the Moors had brought it riches 
 and power; and gallant soldiers, haughty nobles, 
 and high-bred ladies made it both elegant and 
 picturesque. 
 
 Young Prince John had a miniature court of his 
 own, and in this Diego had place and duty. But in 
 1497 the hopes of Spain were dashed, for Prince 
 John suddenly sickened and died, to the great grief 
 of his father and mother and the people over whom 
 he was to rule. 
 
 But Isabella the queen retained her favor for 
 Diego Columbus, and after the death of Prince 
 John she appointed this son of Columbus as one of 
 her own pages. So Diego lived on at court. He
 
 236 GREAT MEN*S SONS. 
 
 served his sovereigns in one position or another all 
 through the eventful and varied life of his famous 
 father, who was so often raised to success and 
 so often tasted the bitter cup of defeat, of loss, and 
 disgrace. 
 
 Whether he cared more for the honors and per- 
 quisites of his court favor than for the success and 
 comfort of his worried old father, we cannot say. 
 It would seem sometimes as if he did. For, again 
 and again, we find the old Admiral writing to his 
 boy from the midst of his failures and persecutions, 
 begging Diego to intercede for him and gain from 
 the king and queen recognition of his services and 
 the adjustment of his claim. 
 
 For you must know that more than the discovery 
 of a new world to Columbus were the promises that 
 had been made to him because of this discovery- 
 promises that were never kept. King Ferdinand 
 and Queen Isabella were a tricky couple. It was 
 not altogether their fault, it was the fault of their 
 time. They tricked the Moors whom they con- 
 quered, quite as much by underhand ways as by 
 gallant fighting. They tricked the Jews, whose 
 money they " borrowed " to carry on their wars ; 
 and they, of course, tricked Columbus promising 
 him much and paying nothing. 
 
 But Columbus would not yield an inch in his 
 demands. He would have all or nothing. He 
 got nothing and died in poverty and loneliness.
 
 BRONZE STATUE OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS BEFORE THE CATHEDRAL OF 
 237 SANTO DOMINGO CITY.
 
 THE SON OF COLUMBUS. 239 
 
 We do not find that Diego Columbus was pres- 
 ent by his father's sick-bed at Valladolid, nor with 
 him when, in May, 1506, he died. The young 
 man seems rather to have been selfishly looking 
 out for Number One at court. But, after his father's 
 death, the son took up the unsuccessful claim, and 
 was so shrewd a schemer, or so great a favorite, 
 that in less than a year after the death of Colum- 
 bus young Diego, now about twenty-four years 
 old, was established in all the contracts for which 
 his father had fought but never obtained. 
 
 Diego was named "Admiral of the Seas" and 
 " Viceroy of the Indies " ; he was granted a princely 
 income from the revenues of the new lands ; and, 
 to crown all, like the young prince he had become, 
 he married a princess and the cousin of the King, 
 and was therefore, like the hero of the fairy tales, 
 certain to live happy ever after ! It was quite a 
 rise for the little tramp of Huelva and La Rabida, 
 was it not ? 
 
 He entered at once upon his possessions. He 
 sailed to the new world as governor and viceroy, 
 with a splendid equipment, and nobles, priests, and 
 soldiers in his train. 
 
 He ruled in the great castle, still standing in 
 Santo Domingo City the Homanaje ; he built 
 him a splendid palace, the ruins of which to-day 
 shelter only pigs and dirt ; and he kept so fine a
 
 240 
 
 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 court in his island realm that the people in Spain 
 at last grew jealous of his wealth and grandeur ; 
 they preferred charges of cruelty and extortion 
 against him and induced the king to cut away 
 some of his powers and possessions. This 
 
 THE HOMANAJE, OR CASTLE OF DON DIEGO COLUMBUS AT SANTO DOMINGO 
 CITY (STILL STANDING) 
 
 brought Don Diego home in hot haste to protest 
 against the injustice, and to demand even greater 
 concessions because of the services of his father 
 Columbus. He was shrewd enough to lend
 
 THE SOJV OF COLUMBUS. 
 
 2 4 I 
 
 money to the new Emperor of Germany, who was 
 also King of Spain, the famous Charles the Fifth ; 
 and as a result he received the authority and 
 concessions he demanded. 
 
 Again he went to his palace in Santo Domingo ; 
 again the jealousy and charges were renewed ; and 
 
 THE PALACE OF DON DIEGO COLUMBUS, STILL STANDING IN SANTO 
 DOMINGO CITY. 
 
 again he hurried to Spain to look out for Number 
 One. He had harder work this time. Indeed it 
 was so hard that Don Diego broke down under 
 the strain and suddenly died at Montalvan in 
 Spain, on the 23d of February, 1526, at the early 
 age of forty-two.
 
 242 GREA T MEN'S SONS. 
 
 So you see the fairy tale did not turn out just 
 like a real fairy tale, after all for, certainly, Don 
 Diego, who married the princess, did not live happily 
 ever after. Perhaps, if he had not been quite so 
 selfish and grasping, if he had been satisfied with 
 less, and more thoughtful of his duties as a 
 governor than of his "rights" as the son of his 
 father, life would have been pleasanter, longer, 
 and more satisfactory. 
 
 But Diego Columbus lived in a day of greed, 
 surrounded by an atmosphere of selfishness, 
 rapacity, and jealousy. Each man was afraid his 
 neighbor would get more from that treasure house 
 of the Indies than he, and from king to cabin boy 
 they all tried to get the best of one another. 
 
 Without inheriting the ability, the energy, the 
 faith, the persistence, or the high motives of his 
 great father, Diego Columbus did succeed to that 
 father's greed, ambition, selfishness, and lack of 
 moral strength. He introduced the negro-slave 
 trade into America ; he persecuted the helpless 
 Indians ; he stimulated that thirst for gold that 
 was the cause of Spain's weakness and downfall. 
 
 His was but another case of misused oppor- 
 tunity. Diego Columbus had every chance a man 
 could have to make a name for himself, and to leave 
 a record for wise actions and gentle deeds that 
 might have made his name even greater than his
 
 THE SON OF COLUMBUS. 243 
 
 father's. Las Casas, the Spanish priest, made for 
 himself a name that is glorious in the story of the 
 days of Columbus and in the annals of philanthropy; 
 because, in an age of cruelty, he dared to plead for 
 'kindness, and in a time of tyranny he cried aloud 
 for justice. Diego Columbus heard but did not 
 heed this voice ; he saw but never accepted his 
 opportunity. He was devoured with the desire for 
 gold and power, and, though he gained both, they 
 became the instruments of his own worrying into 
 an early death. They added- no new glory to the 
 name of Columbus that the world now holds as 
 famous ; for nothing that Diego Columbus accom- 
 plished has strenghtened the glory of that name ; 
 it is famous simply because of the persistent faith 
 and indomitable pluck of this boy's great father- 
 Christopher Columbus, the discoverer of America.
 
 XIV. 
 
 THE SON OF LUTHER. 
 
 HIGH on a Saxon hillside overlooking the 
 pleasant valley of the Itz, and in the shadow 
 of the loftier Frankenwalds, stands an old castle 
 now gray with age and rich in memories. In one 
 of its many guest-rooms, near an open window, 
 about which crows and jackdaws hung with swirl 
 and clamor, there sat, many years ago, a stockily 
 built, firm-featured, fearless-eyed man writing a 
 letter. 
 
 Armed men fill the castle ; upon its walls and on 
 its highest turrets watchmen stand on guard ; above 
 it floats the standard of the Elector of Saxony ; and 
 the great gate opens only to the summons of those 
 who come with credentials or password. 
 
 The time is one of anxiety and excitement, for 
 the Protestant princes of northern Germany have 
 
 taken a bold stand against their lord the Emperor. 
 
 244
 
 THE SON OF LUTHER. 24$ 
 
 Messengers ride daily to and from the castle, and 
 letters are sent now this way and now that, freighted 
 with important measures or heavy with words of 
 protest, counsel, and appeal, strengthening those 
 who waver, restraining those who are over-bold. 
 
 As by his open window in the ancient castle of 
 Coburg, where his presence is honored and his 
 word is law, the strong man sits at work, what is 
 the letter that he writes ? Who is the Prince or 
 preacher for whom his words of wisdom are penned ? 
 Is he a soldier issuing commands, or a councillor 
 sending advice to elector, duke, or king? 
 
 We draw near the writer, and as we look over 
 his shoulder, following the queer old German script 
 his quick quill traces on the paper, this is what we 
 read : 
 
 "Grace and peace in Christ. My dear little son, I am glad 
 to hear that thou learnest well and prayest diligently. Do this, 
 my son, and continue it ; when I return home I will bring thee 
 a fine fairing. 
 
 " I know a beautiful cheerful garden, in which many children 
 walk about. They have golden coats on, and gather beautiful 
 apples under the trees, and pears and cherries and plums ; 
 they sing, and jump about, and are merry ; they have also fine 
 little horses with golden bridles and silver saddles. And I 
 asked the man, ' Whose children are they ? ' He replied, ' These 
 are the children who like to pray and learn and are pious.' 
 Then I said, ' My good man, I have a son ; his name is John 
 Luther ; may he not also come to this garden to eat such nice 
 apples and pears, and ride such fine little horses and play with
 
 246 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 these children ?' And the man said, 'If he likes to pray and 
 learn and is pious, he shall come to this garden with Philip and 
 James ; and when they all come together they shall have pipes 
 and cymbals, flutes and other musical instruments, and dance, 
 and shoot with little cross-bows. 
 
 " And he showed me a fine meadow in the garden prepared 
 for dancing, there being nothing but golden pipes, cymbals, and 
 beautiful silver cross-bows. But it was yet early and the 
 children had not dined. Therefore I could not wait for the 
 dancing, and said to the man/ My good master, I will go quickly 
 and write all this to my dear son John, that he may pray dili- 
 gently, learn well, and be pious, that he also may be admitted 
 into this garden ; but he hath an Aunt Lena whom he must 
 bring with him.' The man answered, ' So be it ; go and write 
 this to him.' 
 
 " Therefore, my dear little son John, learn and pray with all 
 confidence ; and tell this to Philip and James, that they also may 
 learn and pray ; and ye will all meet in this beautiful garden. 
 Herewith I commend thee to Almighty God. Give greetings 
 to Aunt Lena, and also a kiss from me. Thy father who loves 
 thee, 
 
 " MARTIN LUTHER. 
 
 " i pth June, 1530." 
 
 A cheery, bright, helpful, story-like letter to a boy, 
 is it not ? Written from that old German castle in 
 a time of danger and of controversy, it suggests 
 rather the home-loving, peace-loving, gentle-minded 
 father than the man of action, the leader of people, 
 the shaper of opinions to whom men looked for 
 guidance, leadership, and deliverance. It shows us, 
 however, how even in the midst of alarms the heart 
 of the leader goes out from turmoil and danger to
 
 THE SON OF LUTHER. 
 
 247 
 
 the home he loves, and the dear ones who are 
 always in his thoughts. For the writer of this 
 " Hans Andersen " sort of letter was neither soldier, 
 prince nor priest. He was, indeed, greater than 
 soldier, prince, or priest ; he was the one man who 
 
 LUTHER WITH HIS THESES, BEFORE THE CHURCH DOOR AT WITTENBERG. 
 
 gave the death-blow to the ignorance of the Dark 
 Ages, and changed the history of the world. For 
 the writer was Martin Luther, the apostle of the 
 Reformation, the "renegade monk" who dared, in
 
 248 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 spite of Pope and Orders, to tell the world that 
 alike the Word of God and the conscience of man 
 were free ; and who, in the year 1521, commanded by 
 Pope and Emperor to take back his bold words, 
 heroicly said, in the midst of enemies and in the 
 face of almost certain death : " I may not, I can- 
 not retract; for it is neither safe nor~right to act 
 against conscience. Here stand I. I cannot do 
 
 o 
 
 otherwise. God help me." 
 
 And the little four-year-old boy to whom this 
 story-like letter was written was Luther's first-born, 
 his dearly loved "son John." He was named for 
 his grandfather Hans (or John) Luther, the Saxon 
 miner, and he was born in June, 1526, in the 
 cloister-home in Wittenberg, where his father, 
 Martin Luther, had first lived as monk, and after- 
 wards as master. For when that monk made his 
 heroic stand, and the men of northern Germany 
 followed him as a leader, the Prince of his home- 
 land, who was called the Elector of Saxony, gave 
 him as his home the Augustinian convent at 
 Wittenberg, which had been deserted by the 
 monks, who would not follow the man whom 
 they called " the renegade." 
 
 Here, in the cloisters of the old convent, close to 
 the city wall, and almost overhanging the river 
 Elbe, Martin Luther and his wife Catherine made 
 their home ; here they received into their house-
 
 THE SON OF LUTHER. 249 
 
 hold, students, professors, travellers, and guests 
 men anxious to hear the glad tidings of religious 
 freedom that this great leader proclaimed to Ger- 
 many and the world ; and here, as I have told you, 
 in June, 1526, was " Hanschen," or ''little Johnny," 
 Luther born. 
 
 Martin Luther -was a man who loved home and 
 family ties, and from babyhood little John was most 
 dear to him. The Reformer's letters to his friends 
 are full of references to the small stranger who had 
 come into the Wittenberg home ; and neither hot 
 religious disputes, knotty theological problems, nor 
 grave political happenings could crowd Johnny out 
 of the father's heart. 
 
 We get these glimpses of "our John" frequently. 
 " Through the grace of God there has come to us," 
 he writes to one of his friends, "a little Hans 
 [John] Luther, a hale and hearty first-born " ; and 
 a few days later he says that, with wife and son, he 
 envies neither Pope nor Emperor. Of the year- 
 old boy he writes, in May, 1527, " My little Johnny 
 is lively and robust, and eats and drinks like a 
 hero." 
 
 That year of 1527 some terribly contagious dis- 
 ease, called, as all such "catching" illnesses then 
 were, "the plague," visited Wittenberg and con- 
 verted the Luther household " into a hospital." 
 " Thy little favorite John " thus he closes a letter
 
 250 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 to a friend " does not salute thee, for he is too ill 
 to speak ; but through me he solicits your prayers. 
 For the last twelve days he has not eaten a morsel. 
 'T is wonderful to see how the poor child keeps up 
 his spirits ; he would manifestly be as gay and joy- 
 ous as ever, were it not for the excess of his physi- 
 cal weakness." It was in the midst of the poverty 
 and worry that the plague and the other crosses he 
 endured brought about, that Luther wrote his great 
 hymn, " Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott," one of the 
 grand and triumphant " Hymns of the Ages," and 
 we can imagine that, with his powerful voice, he 
 rang the hymn out gladly when, in December, 1527, 
 he could write thankfully, " Our John is well and 
 strong again." 
 
 Luther was a great letter-writer, and in the midst 
 of pressing duties and important deeds, while away 
 from his loved ones, he could always find time to 
 write home. Many of these "letters home" re- 
 main on record, beginning " To the gracious dame 
 Catherine Luther, my dear spouse, who is torment- 
 ing herself quite unnecessarily "; or, "To my sweet 
 wife Catherine Luther von Born. Grace and peace 
 in the Lord. Dear Catherine, we hope to be with 
 you again if it please God." But among the most 
 famous of these Luther letters is that one which, 
 when "our John" was just four years old, his 
 father wrote from the old castle of Coburg, in the
 
 THE SON OF LUTHER. 253 
 
 shadow of the Saxon mountains, and in the midst 
 of stirring times, sitting at the window as we have 
 seen ; while, outside, the crows were cawing and the 
 jackdaws were chattering and, within, armed men 
 guarded the great letter-writer as the most precious 
 of Germany's possessions. 
 
 That he was thus esteemed, alike by prince and 
 peasant in all that fair German land, history well 
 assures us. At his lead and by his inspiration 
 those who dared make a stand against what they 
 considered churchly tyranny and priestly aggres- 
 sion, followed boldly where he led, though it 
 arrayed them openly against the two greatest 
 potentates of that day of lord and baron, bishop 
 and priest: the Emperor of Germany and the Pope 
 of Rome. It was Luther's words that fired men 
 first to protest and then to resistance, and made 
 it possible for the boys and girls of Protestant 
 Europe and of our free American land of to-day to 
 be free indeed ; for real freedom can only come 
 when men's consciences are unshackled and thought 
 is loosed from chains. Until Luther's day men 
 were shackled in conscience and chained in thought, 
 and this freedom from priestly interference came 
 through the great Protestant Reformation, because 
 the father of this sturdy German family of boys and 
 girls in Wittenberg dared to speak and act and 
 counsel as his heart dictated, in spite of the " bulls "
 
 254 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 of popes, the dictates of kings, the pleadings of the 
 timid, and the threats of the hostile. 
 
 The father of little John Luther ranks high 
 among the world's great men ; but his greatness, 
 for us, is increased rather than diminished because 
 of his simple home life and his strong home love ; 
 for "he that is faithful in the least is faithful also 
 in much," and we find as much pleasure in our 
 glimpses of his life in his Wittenberg home, 
 among his boys and girls as in seeing him nail up 
 the famous " theses " on the church door, or in his 
 heroic journey to face the hostile Diet at Worms. 
 No man is ever too great to neglect the petty 
 duties of home, or ignore the. simple loves and dear 
 devotions of a quiet family life. 
 
 Five boys and girls blessed that cloister-home at 
 Wittenberg. The Luthers were never "well-to- 
 do " ; sometimes they were so short of money for 
 Luther was over-generous in his charities as to 
 feel the pinch of poverty. But Luther had friends 
 in high places who would not let him want, and he 
 was therefore able to give his boys tutors at home, 
 and good instruction later on in life. 
 
 " Son John " could scarcely be called a brilliant 
 scholar. Indeed, he was a bit dull, and inclined to 
 take things easy. In this, his mother seems to have 
 been just a trifle partial to her first-born, and in- 
 clined to help him thus take things easy. So,
 
 THE SON OF LUTHER. 2$$ 
 
 when he was sixteen, " son John" was sent away 
 to school. 
 
 From the letter which he bore from his father to 
 Mark Crodel, the teacher of the Latin school in 
 the Saxon town of Torgau, young John seems to 
 have entered the school as a sort of "pupil-teacher " ; 
 for thus the letter runs : 
 
 " According to our arrangement, my dear Mark, 
 I send thee my son John, that thou mayst employ 
 him in teaching the children grammar and music, 
 and at the same time superintend and improve his 
 moral conduct. If thou succeedest in improving 
 him, I will send thee two other sons of mine. For, 
 though I desire my children to be good divines, yet 
 I would have them sound grammarians and accom- 
 plished musicians." 
 
 Young John would seem to have been sent to 
 Torgau as one needing correction ; and, indeed, I 
 am afraid he was not always a good or a dutiful 
 son ; otherwise it is hard to explain the words of 
 Luther when one of his friends spoke of the boy's 
 frequent attacks of illness. " Ay," said Dr. Luther, 
 " 'tis the punishment due to his disobedience. He 
 almost killed me once, and ever since I have but 
 little strength of body. Thanks to him, I now 
 thoroughly understand that passage where St. Paul 
 speaks of children who kill their parents not by the 
 sword, but by disobedience."
 
 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 Just how the son " nearly killed " his father we 
 cannot say. It may have been the great man's 
 strong way of putting things; but evidently "son 
 John " also needed reformation. Martin Luther 
 was a man of intense convictions and strong hero- 
 isms. He was a masterful man, and such men 
 always wish to have their own way and to make 
 it the way also of their sons and daughters. So, 
 you can perhaps understand that when young John 
 went counter to his father's counsels and com- 
 mands it was like a stroke of the sword, that cut 
 deep into the father's heart. 
 
 Perhaps, therefore, John was not what we should 
 call so "awfully bad" even though he "nearly 
 killed " his great father ; but, however that may 
 have been, we certainly catch more glimpses of 
 John's good side than of his bad side. Among 
 these are many that show love of father and 
 mother, and the enjoyment of home notably a 
 famous game of bowls in the long courts of the old 
 convent home at Wittenberg, where John and cer- 
 tain of Luther's divinity students played a match 
 game against the Reformer himself and other 
 students, and beat them roundly. 
 
 Young John Luther evidently revered and hon- 
 ored his mighty father, even if he did occasionally 
 go contrary to his desires or " break over the 
 traces."
 
 THE SON OF LUTHER. 
 
 He was his father's confidant in many important 
 matters, and the companion of his father in many 
 of his expeditions about Germany. For Luther 
 was constantly in demand to keep the barons of 
 Germany in line with the new movement of Prot- 
 estant Germany, and John was with him on that 
 fatal trip to Eisleben in January, 1546, when the 
 Reformer, at the Elector's request, sought to recon- 
 cile the quarrelsome Counts of Mansfeld. 
 
 With his boy he forded the icy rivers Mulde and 
 Saale, where they nearly lost their lives, and where 
 the Reformer doubtless "caught his death." Es- 
 corted by horsemen and spearmen, Luther and his 
 son entered Eisleben ; the Counts of Mansfeld 
 were reconciled, but Luther fell sick, and that very 
 night, the i8th of February, he died. 
 
 All Germany mourned the great man's death ; 
 all Germany hoped that his boys might follow in 
 the father's steps. But the three sons of Luther 
 seem only to have turned out respectable men, with- 
 out any of the elements of greatness or leadership. 
 
 John Luther made a fairly good lawyer. He 
 married the daughter of one of his professors at 
 Konigsberg University ; served as a soldier in the 
 German army ; settled down, and died at Konigs- 
 berg, in the year 1576, at the age of fifty. His 
 name is chiefly remembered as the "dear Johnny" 
 and "son John" of his great father's letters, and of
 
 258 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 the happy home circle in the cloister-house at Wit- 
 tenberg. He left neither name nor deed to make 
 his memory a word in the mouths of men ; yet we 
 cannot but feel that, as the son of Luther, he must 
 have been proud of the great father whom he 
 remembered only with love and reverence, and, let 
 us hope, rejoiced to see the regard the world paid 
 to the masterful ways of the great Reformer and 
 leader, whose gifts the son did not inherit, and 
 whose name he but feebly upheld.
 
 XV. 
 
 THE SON OF SHAKSPERE. 
 (A.D. IS95-) 
 
 MANY years ago had you been, let us say, 
 a tinker travelling with your wares or 
 a knight riding by, you might have passed, upon a 
 small arched bridge that spanned a little river in 
 the heart of " Merrie England," a small boy, hang- 
 ing over the coping of the bridge, now watching 
 the rippling water, or now, with eager eyes, looking 
 along the roadway that ran between green meadows 
 toward that distant London, from which, perhaps, 
 you were tramping or riding. 
 
 I think, as you passed, you would have looked twice 
 at that small boy on the bridge, whether you were 
 low-down tinker or high-born knight. For he was 
 a bright, sweet-faced little ten-year-old in his quaint 
 sixteenth-century costume, and the look of expec- 
 tancy in his eyes might, as it fell upon your face, 
 
 259
 
 260 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 have shaped itself into the spoken question, " Have 
 you seen my father as you came along?" 
 
 Whereupon, had you been the lordly knight, you 
 might have said : " And who might your father be, 
 little one ? " Or, had you been the low-down tramp- 
 ing tinker, you would probably have grunted out : 
 
 " Hoi, zurs ! An' who be'est yur feythur, 
 hid?" 
 
 To either of which questions that small boy on 
 the bridge would have answered in some surprise 
 for he supposed that, surely, all men knew his 
 father. 
 
 " Why ; Master William Shakspere, the player 
 in London." 
 
 For that little river is the Avon ; that small 
 bridge of arches is Clopton's mill-bridge ; that small 
 boy is Hamnet, the only son of Master William 
 Shakspere, of Henley Street in Stratford-on- 
 Avon. And in the year 1 595, the name of William 
 Shakspere was already known in London as that of 
 one of the Lord Chamberlain's company of actors, 
 and a writer of masterly poems and plays. 
 
 Perhaps, if you were the tinker, you might be 
 tired enough with your tramping to throw off your 
 pack and, sitting upon it, to talk with the little lad ; 
 or, if you were the knight, it might please your 
 worship to breathe your horse upon the bridge and 
 hold a moment's converse with the child.
 
 TffE SON Of SttAKSPE&E. 261 
 
 Were you tinker or knight the time would not be 
 misspent, for you would find young Hamnet Shak- 
 spere a most entertaining little chap. 
 
 He would tell you of his twin sister Judith 
 something of a " torn-boy," I fear, but a pretty and 
 lovable little girl nevertheless. And, as Hamnet 
 told you about Judith, you would remember no, 
 you would not, though! for neither tinker nor knight 
 nor any other Englishman of 1595 knew what we 
 to-day know of Shakspere's plays ; but if you should 
 happen to have a prophetic dream of the little fel- 
 low you might conclude that Shakspere's twins must 
 have been often in the great writer's mind ; for they 
 stole into his work repeatedly in such shapes as 
 that charming brother and sister of his Twelfth 
 Night Sebastian and Viola 
 
 " An apple cleft in two, is not more twin 
 Than these two creatures," 
 
 or the twin brothers, Antipholus of Ephesus, and 
 Syracuse, and those very, very funny twin brothers 
 of the Comedy of Errors, forever famous as the 
 Two Dromios. 
 
 And if young Hamnet told you of his sister he 
 would tell you, doubtless, of his grandfather who 
 was once the bailiff or head man of Stratford town, 
 and who lived with them in the little house in 
 Henley Street ; and especially would he tell you of
 
 262 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 his own dear father, Master William Shakspere, 
 who wrote poems and plays and had even acted, at 
 the last Christmas revels, before Her Majesty the 
 Queen in her palace at Greenwich. For you may 
 be sure boy Hamnet was very proud of this 
 thinking more of it, no doubt, than of all the 
 poems and plays his father had written. 
 
 Then, perhaps, you could lead the boy to tell you 
 about himself. He might tell you how he liked 
 his school if he did like it ; for perhaps, like his 
 father's schoolboy, he did sometimes go 
 
 " with his satchel 
 
 And shining morning face, creeping like snail 
 Unwillingly to school." 
 
 He would, however, be more interested to tell 
 you that he went to school in the Chapel of the 
 Holy Cross, because the old school-house next door, 
 to which his father had gone as a boy, was being 
 repaired that year, and he liked going to school in 
 the chapel because it gave him more holidays. 
 
 Ah ! he would tell you, he did enjoy those holi- 
 days. For the little house in Henley Street was a 
 bit crowded, and he liked to be out-of-doors, being, 
 I suspect, rather a boy of the woods and fields than 
 of the Horn-book, the Queens Grammar, and Catds 
 Maxims, which were what he had to study at his 
 school. He and Judith had jolly good times,
 
 MASTER WILLIAM SHAKSPERE, OF NEW PLACE IN STRATFORD. 
 
 263
 
 THE SON OF S11AKSPERE. 265 
 
 playing ; for Judith was a good comrade and really 
 had it easier than he did so he would say, jusr a 
 bit enviously perhaps, for Judith never went to 
 school. In fact, to her dying day, Judith Shak- 
 spere, think of that you Shakspere scholars ! a 
 daughter of the greatest name in English litera- 
 ture, could neither read nor write. 
 
 So the Shakspere twins would roam the fields, 
 and knew,- blindfolded, all that bright country-side 
 about beautiful Stratford. Their father was a great 
 lover of nature. You know that from reading his 
 plays ; and in this his twins took after him. Young 
 Hamnet Shakspere loved to hang over Clopton 
 bridge, as we found him to-day, watching the rip- 
 pling Avon as it wound through the Stratford 
 meadows and past the little town. He knew all 
 the turns and twists of that storied river with which 
 his great father's name is now so closely linked. 
 He knew where to find and how to catch the perch 
 and pike that swam beneath its surface. He and 
 Judith had punted on it above and below Clopton 
 bridge, and on many a warm summer day he had 
 stripped for a swim in its cooling water. 
 
 He knew Stratford from the Guild Pits to the 
 Worcester Road, and from the Salmon Tail to the 
 Cross-on-the-Hill. He could tell you how big a 
 jump it was across the streamlet in front of the 
 Rother Market, and how much higher the roof of
 
 266 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 the Bell was than of the Wool Shop, next door 
 for he had climbed them both. 
 
 He knew where, in Stratford meadows, the vio- 
 lets grew thickest and bluest in the spring, where 
 the tall cowslips fairly " smothered " the fields, as 
 the boys and girls of Stratford affirmed, and where, 
 in the wood by the weir-brakes, just below the 
 town, the fairies sometimes came from the Long 
 Compton quarries to dance and sing on a midsum- 
 mer night. 
 
 Time and again, he had wandered along the 
 Avon from Luddington to Charlecote. He had 
 taken many a trip to his mother's home cottage at 
 Shottery, and to his grandfather's orchards at Snit- 
 terfield, for leather-coats and wardens. He knew 
 how to snare rabbits and "conies" in Hemington 
 woods, and he had learned how to tell, by their 
 horns, the age of the deer in Charlecote park- 
 descendants, perhaps, of that very deer, because of 
 which his father once got into trouble with testy 
 old Sir Thomas Lucy, the lord of Charlecote 
 manor. 
 
 The birds were his pets and playfellows. And 
 what quantities there were all about Stratford 
 town ! Hamnet knew their ways and their tradi- 
 tions. He could tell you why the lark was hanged 
 for treason ; how the swan celebrated its own 
 death ; how the wren came to be king of the birds;
 
 THE SON Of SHAKSPERE. 267 
 
 and how the cuckoo swallowed its step-father. He 
 could tell you where the nightingale and the lark 
 sang their sweetest " tirra-terra " in the weir-border 
 below Stratford church, and just how many thievish 
 jackdaws made their nests in Stratford spire. He 
 could show you the very fallow in which he had 
 caught a baby lapwing scudding away with its shell 
 on its head, and in just what field the crow-boys 
 had rigged up the best kind of a scarecrow to 
 frighten the hungry birds. 
 
 So you see, little Hamnet Shakspere could 
 keep you interested with his talk until it was time 
 if you were the tramping tinker to toss once 
 more your heavy pack on your shoulders, or, if you 
 were lordly knight, to cry "get on" to your now 
 rested horse. And, by this time, you would have 
 discovered that here was a boy who, with eyes to 
 see and ears to hear all the sights and sounds of 
 that beautiful country about Stratford and along 
 the Avon's banks, had learned also to find, as his 
 father, later on, described it : 
 
 " tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
 Sermons in stones, and good in everything." 
 
 A clatter of hoofs rings upon the London high- 
 way. The boy springs to his feet ; he scarcely 
 waits to give you his hasty good-day, but with a 
 hop, skip, and jump, flies across the bridge and
 
 268 GREA T MEN'S SONS. 
 
 along the road. And, as he is lifted to the saddle 
 by the well-built, handsome man with scarlet doub- 
 let, loose riding-cloak, broad white collar, auburn 
 hair and beard, who sits his white horse so well, 
 you know that father and son are riding home 
 together, and that there will be joy in the little 
 home in Henley Street. For Master William 
 Shakspere, the London player, has come from 
 town to spend a day at home, in Stratford village 
 which he loves so dearly. 
 
 Perhaps, two or three years later, you may be 
 led again to tramp or ride through Stratford town. 
 As you loiter a while at the Bear Tavern, near the 
 Clopton bridge, you recognize the arches and the 
 pleasant river that flows beneath them, and then 
 you remember the little boy with whom you talked 
 on the bridge. 
 
 To your inquiries, the landlord of the Bear says, 
 with a sigh and a shake of the head : 
 
 "A gentle lad, sir, and a sad loss to his father/ 
 
 " What dead ? " you ask. 
 
 "Yes; two years ago," the landlord replies. 
 " Little Hamnet was never very strong, to be sure, 
 but he sickened and died almost before we knew 
 aught was wrong with him. A sad loss to his 
 father. Master Shakspere dearly loved the lad, 
 and while he was gathering fame and wealth he
 
 269 "MASTER WILLIAM SHAKSI'EKE HAS COME FROM TOWN.
 
 THE SON OF SHAKSPERE, 2/1 
 
 thought most, I doubt not, of the boy to whom he 
 was to pass them on." 
 
 " So Master William Shakspere has grown rich 
 as well as famous, has he?" you ask ; for all Eng- 
 land knows, by this time, of his wonderful plays. 
 
 " Indeed, yes," the landlord answers you. l< See, 
 sir, over the trees, that big house yonder? It is 
 New Place, bought in the spring of this very year 
 of 1597 by Master Shakspere, and put into fine 
 repair. And there all his family live now his 
 wife, Mistress Ann, his old father, Master John, 
 and all the children. But little Hamnet is not 
 there ; and I doubt not, sir, Master Shakspere would 
 gladly give all New Place and his big theatre in 
 London, too, if he could have that son of his back 
 again, alive and well, and as happy of face as he 
 used to be in the old house in Henley Street." 
 
 The landlord of the Bear is right. Hamnet 
 Shakspere ended his short life on the eleventh 
 of August, 1596, being then but eleven years old. 
 
 We know but little of his famous father's private 
 life ; we know even less of the son he so dearly 
 loved. Nor can any one say, had the boy but lived, 
 whether he would have inherited anything of his 
 great father's genius. 
 
 The play of Hamlet may, as some students assert, 
 have been so called in memory of the boy Hamnet, 
 so nearly are the names alike ; even more is it
 
 2/2 
 
 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 possible that the lovely boy, Prince Arthur, whose 
 tragic story is a part of Shakspere's play of King 
 John, may have been drawn in memory of the 
 writer's dead boy. For King John was written in 
 the year of young Hamnet Shakspere's death ; and 
 with the loss of the boy he so dearly loved weigh- 
 ing upon his soul, the great writer, whose name 
 and fame the years only make yet more great, may 
 thus have put into words a tender memory of the 
 short-lived little Hamnet, the gentle son of Shaks- 
 pere.
 
 XVI. 
 
 THE SON OF CROMWELL. 
 
 (A. D. 1650.) 
 
 IN the famous old English village of St. Ives 
 famous because of a certain nursery rhyme 
 concerning a man who, travelling toward the town, 
 met seven wives with their seven cats and kits 
 there once lived a farmer, who, later in his life, be- 
 came more famous than St. Ives itself. 
 
 Out West, in this country, they would have called 
 him a ranchman. He was really a cattle farmer, 
 with a big grazing farm that lay along the river 
 Ouse, in what is termed " the fen country " of Eng- 
 land. Here, where the Ouse slipped thickly and 
 lazily through those low, green, boggy, marshy fields 
 called the fens, this farmer raised his beef, his pork, 
 and his mutton ; and here lived his son Richard, as 
 lazy and sluggish of nature as the river along 
 whose banks he lounged, or fished, or wandered as 
 
 18 273
 
 274 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 a boy, until it was time to send him off to Fel- 
 stead School, in Essex, where his brothers, before 
 and after him, were placed for such education as 
 those days provided. 
 
 A slow, good-natured, easy-going fellow was this 
 boy Dick " lazy Dick," his father often nicknamed 
 him ; he was neither as bright in mind or manner 
 as his younger brother Harry, nor as promising a 
 lad as his elder brother Robert. Robin was what 
 this elder brother was called ; he was the delight 
 
 5 
 
 and hope of his fond father then called by his 
 neighbors "the Lord of the Fens," because of the 
 stand he had taken against the king's threatened 
 " improvement " of the marshy fen lands. To-day 
 the world honors and reveres that sturdy farmer of 
 the fens as Britain's mightiest man Oliver Crom- 
 well, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of 
 England. 
 
 We catch a few glimpses not many, unfortu- 
 nately of the quiet home at St. Ives, in which the 
 Cromwell boys and girls lived. It was a happy 
 and united home, blest with a mother whom her 
 children revered, and having at its head a father 
 they honored and never dared to disobey. 
 
 But fathers in those days, two hundred and 
 fifty years and more ago, though stern in their 
 ways with children, were as fond and as loving as 
 are the fathers of to-day. Cromwell the farmer,
 
 THE SON OF CROMWELL. 2J$ 
 
 Cromwell the general, Cromwell the lord protector, 
 loved his children dearly, and labored for their 
 good, alike in the great palace at Whitehall as in 
 the low, timber-framed house upon the one street 
 of St. Ives, where the willows shivered in the wind, 
 and the cattle grazed and fattened upon the wide 
 marshy meadows that lined the sluggish Ouse. 
 
 How young Dick Cromwell fared as a boy at St. 
 Ives we have little means of knowing. When he 
 was ten years old in the year 1636 the Crom- 
 wells moved into a bigger house at Ely, fifteen 
 miles away. It was called Ely from the eels that 
 wriggled about in the muddy Ouse ; it is that 
 famous cathedral town of the fens, where King 
 Canute, who tried to order back the tide, once 
 bade his rowers stop his boat that he might hear 
 the monks of the cathedral sing. 
 
 Probably boy Dick thought more of bobbing for 
 eels in the Ouse than of King Canute and the 
 monks ; for there were no monks singing in Eng- 
 land when Richard Cromwell was a boy ; there was 
 soon to be no king in England, either ; and in that 
 great uprising against principalities and powers 
 Dick Cromwell's father was to bear an important 
 part. 
 
 We would like to know more of Richard Crom- 
 well's boyhood. We would like to know how he 
 lived and what he did as a small boy on that cattle
 
 276 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 farm among the fens at St. Ives, and at the more 
 spacious homestead in the shadow of the great gray 
 towers of Ely Cathedral. We would like to know 
 whether he liked sport, as most boys do, or whether 
 he was too lazy to exert himself at play. We would 
 like to know how he studied, and what he learned 
 at the Free Grammar-School at Felstead, where, 
 one after the other, four of the Cromwell boys were 
 sent ; whether he loved football as much as his 
 father did, and became a champion full-back, as his 
 father had been when he was a boy. 
 
 I am afraid Richard Cromwell was just as care- 
 less at his books as at the later duties that came to 
 him ; for, from things that have come down to us, 
 we know that his busy father, who was as ambitious 
 for his boys as all fathers are, had but little patience 
 with lazy bones anywhere, and reproved boy Dick 
 for his carelessness, just as he found fault with young 
 Mr. Dick, in later years, for his shiftless ways. 
 
 Troublesome times came to England. The peo- 
 ple rose in defence of their rights. The king fell. 
 The throne and crown were abolished. The par- 
 liament bent before the iron will of the people's 
 champion ; and, after serving grandly as captain 
 of a troop and general of an army, the determined 
 farmer of the fens took the helm and steered his 
 country through reefs and breakers, until, under 
 the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, the Common-
 
 THE BATTLE OF MARSTON MOOR. 
 
 (Frvm the fainting by Emile Bayard^) 
 
 277
 
 THE SON OF CROMWELL. 279 
 
 wealth of England became the first power in 
 Europe, unconquerable on the land, invincible on 
 the sea. 
 
 Step by step Cromwell rose to power. Against 
 his own desire he rose, the one strong man in Eng- 
 land. And, as he advanced, his family rose with 
 him into notice and position. Then, one by one the 
 older boys died. Robert, a promising lad of seven- 
 teen, died at Felstead School ; Oliver, the second 
 son, who was named for his father and was a captain 
 in the cavalry, died just before the great victory of 
 Marston Moor, and Richard Cromwell thus became 
 the eldest living son, heir to the estates, successor 
 in power, but never heir to the fame that his 
 mighty father had attained. 
 
 For there was in " lazy Dick " nothing of his 
 father's masterful manner or genius in leadership ; 
 nothing of the display and vast hospitality that 
 made famous his ancestor, known as "the golden 
 knight of Hinchinbrook " ; nothing of the dash and 
 daring that marked his yet more remote ancestor, 
 " Diamond Dick," who unhorsed all his rivals at a 
 tournament, and so defended the king's colors that 
 the pleased monarch, bluff King Henry the Eighth, 
 called the victorious champion his " diamond." 
 
 We are not even certain that Richard Cromwell 
 fought in the wars against the king as did his broth- 
 ers Oliver and Henry, although it is stated that he
 
 28O GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 was present at the battle of Marston Moor, that 
 famous fight that broke forever the king's power in 
 northern England, and made the people supreme. 
 We cannot discover that he desired either the posi- 
 tion or prominence that his father's rise to great- 
 ness gave him. Richard Cromwell cared only to live 
 and die a quiet, inoffensive, lazy country squire. At 
 any other time in the history of the world he might 
 easily have lived " unknown, unhonored, and un- 
 sung." It was his father's fame that brought him 
 into notice ; it was because he had neither the will, 
 the inclination, nor the ability to take up his father's 
 work, and carry it forward for the greatness and 
 glory of England, that, to-day, the world holds in 
 such slight esteem this quiet son of Cromwell. 
 
 We should not blame people for not doing what 
 they cannot do. It may be, indeed, that "lazy 
 Dick " was not shiftless though he was lazy, nor 
 a numskull simply because he was not great. 
 Richard Cromwell liked to take things easy ; he 
 hated to be bothered ; he liked to keep out of 
 trouble, and was willing to let the world wag as it 
 would, so long as he had a comfortable home and 
 nothing particular to do. 
 
 There is nothing really bad in this. Bad boys 
 and men of that stamp, you know, never help the 
 world along. 
 
 And I am afraid that "lazy Dick," notwithstand-
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 (Painting by P. Lcly, f6jj, after the mezzotinto of I. Faber, 1740.) 
 
 281
 
 THE SON OF CROMWELL. 283 
 
 ing all his opportunities and the high position to 
 which he was finally advanced, never did anything 
 to help the world along. If a good thing came in 
 his way he took it, enjoyed it if he could, and got 
 out of it if it proved troublesome and laborious. 
 
 When he was twenty his father tried to make 
 him a lawyer ; but he soon dropped that pro- 
 fession. He offered him a command in the army, 
 but Dick seems never to have accepted it. When 
 he was twenty-three he married a nice girl in 
 Hampshire. Oliver Cromwell loved her dearly; 
 but he and her father had their hands full in trying 
 to make Dick "toe the mark." 
 
 For, whenever he could, Richard Cromwell 
 would slip away from the work of the state his 
 father wished him to do and would go off hunting, or 
 have a good time with other rich do-nothings at his 
 Hampshire farm. He disliked the almost kingly 
 court of his father at Whitehall Palace, and though 
 sent to Parliament he did little and said less. Even 
 when he was made one of his father's chief advisers 
 a privy councillor, it was called his counsels 
 amounted to nothing, and his position was simply 
 what politicians call a sinecure, and you boys " a 
 snap." 
 
 When, at last, his great father's life went out, 
 and England was left without a head, Richard 
 Cromwell was named as his successor, and styled
 
 284 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 the Right Honorable Lord Richard, Protector of 
 the Commonwealth. Lazy Dick became king of 
 England, without the title, but with more of power 
 than many a king before and after him possessed. 
 
 But he had neither the skill nor 'the sense to 
 hold what the people had given him. I doubt if 
 he cared either for the place or the power. They 
 were his, however, but a short time. Dissatisfaction 
 broke into revolt. The nation was divided. The 
 king came to his own again. Charles the Second 
 was placed upon the throne from which his father 
 had been hurled, and Richard Cromwell, without a 
 word of protest, without striking a blow for his 
 power, stepped quietly down from the Lord Pro- 
 tector's chair his father had set up, and slipped back 
 into private life, too weak to be defended by his 
 friends, too insignificant to be persecuted by his 
 foes. 
 
 He lived to be an old, old man, and died at 
 eighty-six amid his rose-gardens at Cheshunt, near 
 London, unhonored and disregarded by the 
 England his father had liberated, but which the 
 son was too weak to uphold as a free common- 
 wealth. 
 
 We must not be too hard on "lazy Dick." He 
 had not a spark of greatness in him, and should 
 not be blamed for failing to maintain his father's 
 glory. As you must have learned, even before you
 
 THE SON OF CROMWELL. 285 
 
 have reached Dick Cromwell's story in this book, 
 it is no easy thing for a small son to live up to the 
 fame of a great father. 
 
 And yet the world does not take lack of ability 
 into account. Richard Cromwell, to-day, has no 
 place in the world's esteem. His name lives 
 because he was his father's son ; because he was a 
 failure where his father had been a success ; and 
 because his life was so sorry and stupid a sequel to 
 the people's stand for liberty, in the days made 
 glorious in English history by the might and 
 power, the grandeur and manliness, the strength 
 and patriotism of England's foremost man Oliver 
 Cromwell, great father of a small son.
 
 XVIII. 
 
 THE SON OF NAPOLEON. 
 
 (A.D. rSzo.) 
 
 A GREAT crowd thronged the garden of the 
 Tuileries. The boom of a cannon fell upon 
 their listening ears. There came another, and then 
 another. The people in the garden counted ; with 
 raised hands, some checked off the boom ! boom ! 
 some did it with nods of the head ; some with the 
 one two three cried aloud. 
 
 " Nineteen twenty twenty-one," they counted. 
 Then, with open ears, they listened breathlessly. 
 "Twenty-two! Hurrah! hurrah!" they shouted. 
 " A boy ; it is a boy ! " they cried, " Long live the 
 Emperor ! Long live the King of Rome ! " 
 
 It was the 2Oth of March, 1811. A baby had 
 been born in the palace of the Tuileries. The 
 booming cannon announced the great event, and 
 
 the people knew that, for a girl, twenty-one guns 
 
 286
 
 THE SON OF NAPOLEON. 28/ 
 
 were to be fired ; for a boy, one hundred. So when 
 the twenty-second gun boomed out, there was no 
 need for further counting. All the people knew 
 that an heir to the throne of France had been born ; 
 and with loud acclamations they shouted, " wel- 
 come !" and "long life !" to the son of Napoleon. 
 
 He was a bright, pretty little fellow, and his 
 father loved him from the day he was born. At his 
 very first cry Napoleon caught him up, and hurry- 
 ing to the great chamber in which the foremost 
 men of the empire were waiting, presented to them 
 " His Majesty, the King of Rome !" 
 
 It was at the height of Napoleon's power. All 
 Europe lay at his feet. Thrones and principalities 
 were his to give away ; but for his son he reserved 
 the title that would revive the greatness and glory 
 of the ancient days and recall the widespread sway 
 of Charlemagne ; the little Napoleon was to be 
 King of Rome, and heir to the Empire of France. 
 
 Few boy-babies were ever more regally reared. 
 His christening was one of the grandest " shows " 
 that had ever been presented in that splendid church 
 the cathedral of Notre Dame. It was on Sunday, 
 the seventh of June, that the baby was christened. 
 His progress from the great palace of the Tuileries 
 to the cathedral was through crowded streets and 
 cheering throngs of people. Through a living lane 
 of glittering helmets and nodding plumes the royal
 
 288 GREA T MEN'S SONS. 
 
 baby rode the least concerned in all that great 
 parade. All along the route stretched a double row 
 of picked soldiers and grenadiers of the Imperial 
 Guard, while at the church waited a throng of 
 princes and peers, of great officials of the crown, of 
 cardinals and bishops and archbishops, of senators 
 and courtiers, and the mayors of the chief cities of 
 the empire, to honor the baptismal day of this 
 son of their emperor. His royal coat of silver 
 tissue embroidered with ermine was upheld by a 
 marshal of the empire ; his mother, the young em- 
 press, walked in state under a gorgeous canopy ; 
 beneath another walked his famous father, the em- 
 peror ; a princess carried his baptismal candle ; a 
 princess held his christening cloth ; a countess bore 
 his salt-cellar ; and grouped about him before the 
 high altar were princes and dukes, chamberlains 
 and marshals ; he had an emperor for his god- 
 father ; he had a queen for his godmother ; and 
 thus, in sight of that whole glittering assembly, 
 was the little fellow baptized as Francis Charles 
 Joseph Napoleon Bonaparte, King of Rome and 
 heir to France, this unconcerned baby whose 
 mighty father, not so very many years before, had 
 been a struggling young Corsican cadet, starving 
 in Paris on sixpence a day, with never a thought 
 that in the days to come his son would be the most 
 famous baby in Europe.
 
 THE SON OF NAPOLEON. 289 
 
 This grand christening ceremony was but the 
 beginning of many brilliant displays in his honor. 
 For Napoleon the emperor was so overjoyed to 
 have a son and heir that he wished all the world to 
 share his joy, and all France to be happy with him. 
 That summer of 1811 was undoubtedly Napoleon's 
 happiest time. 
 
 But a king must have a royal guard. So one day 
 in September, 1 8 1 1 , a brigade of boys, none of them 
 over twelve years old, marched into the Court of the 
 Carrousel, where the Emperor was reviewing his 
 army, and drew up in line of battle opposite the 
 famous Old Guard of the Emperor. And Napo- 
 leon said : " Soldiers of my guard, these are your 
 children. I confide to them the guard of my son, 
 as I have confided myself to you." And to the boys 
 he said : " My children, upon you I impose a diffi- 
 cult duty. But I rely upon you. You are pupils 
 of the guard, and your service is the protection of 
 the King of Rome." 
 
 Napoleon was a devoted father. In this small 
 son of his, he saw the future of all his plans, am- 
 bitions, and hopes, and he loved the boy with all 
 the fondness of a father and the selfishness of a 
 despot. He would caress the little fellow, romp 
 with him, toss him and tease him, and break off the 
 most important duties to give the prince a word 
 or a smile. Stretched full length upon the floor he
 
 2QO GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 would play with the baby's blocks and toys, regard- 
 less of the fact that already his great power was on 
 the wane, and that his empire, built up like Alad- 
 din's palace, almost in a night, was ready to topple 
 and fall, even as did the card-houses he built up for 
 the amusement of his baby boy. 
 
 The little Napoleon's cradle was a piece of 
 picturesque magnificence, made from mother-of- 
 pearl and gold, crowned with a winged Victory and 
 graced with the imperial eagle ; his baby-carriage 
 was a marvel of luxury drawn by two snow-white 
 lambs and guided by a gorgeous official, while 
 every now and then, as an especial favor to the sol- 
 diers on guard, the little boy would be lifted from 
 his glittering baby-carriage to be carried and dandled 
 in the arms of some battle-scarred veteran of the 
 famous Imperial Guard, who counted it a privilege 
 thus to handle the son of his " Little Corporal." 
 
 There were days upon days of splendor and 
 ceremonial, of fte and display, in the early life of 
 the little King of Rome. His father was, literally, 
 kings of kings ; he made and unmade sovereigns ; 
 he carved up nations, and cut out states. 
 
 Suddenly came the collapse. All Europe arrayed 
 itself against this crowned adventurer this man 
 who, through a hundred years, has remained at 
 once the marvel and the puzzle of history. There 
 came days of preparation and leave-taking, of war
 
 THE SON OF NAPOLEON. 29 1 
 
 and battle, of defeat and disgrace. In all of these 
 the son of Napoleon played his part ; it was be- 
 cause of him, perhaps, that they occurred. Napo- 
 leon wished for peace ; he wished to strengthen 
 and consolidate his mighty power so as to give a 
 united kingdom to his son. And when the days 
 of war and struggle came, the old-time fire and 
 dash and courage of the conqueror seemed to have 
 left him ; his hopes were with his boy and that 
 boy's future, rather than in the rush and grapple of 
 armies. 
 
 So Napoleon's star set fast. With all Europe 
 arrayed against him, with France itself divided, 
 and those whom he had lifted to high position 
 joined, secretly or openly, for his overthrow, the 
 great Corsican suddenly became little, and every- 
 thing went wrong. 
 
 On the 25th of January, 1814, the father saw his 
 son for the last time. Holding by the hand the 
 boy, then nearly three years old, the Emperor pre- 
 sented himself before the eight hundred officers of 
 the National Guard of Paris, assembled in the 
 gorgeous Hall of the Marshals. "Officers of the 
 National Guard," he said, " I go to take my place 
 at the head of the army. To your protection I 
 confide my wife and my son upon whom rest so 
 many hopes. In your care I leave what is, next to 
 France, the dearest thing I have in the world."
 
 292 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 Then, with a parting caress to the bright little 
 fellow he loved so dearly the son who, in all the 
 dark moments and all the years of exile that fol- 
 lowed the Emperor's downfall, was never absent 
 from the father's thoughts Napoleon kissed his 
 son good-bye and was off to the war. 
 
 He never saw his boy again. Disaster over- 
 whelmed both the Emperor and the nation. The 
 Guards were powerless to guard. The armies of 
 Napoleon were defeated ; he himself was banished 
 to Elba ; and the little Napoleon with his mother, 
 the Empress, escaped to the court of his grand- 
 father, the Emperor of Austria. 
 
 With a final burst of courage, Napolen escaped 
 from Elba and roused France once again to war. 
 It was in vain. His power and his luck were gone. 
 Waterloo gave him his death-blow, and the lonely 
 island of St. Helena became his prison and his 
 grave. 
 
 Four days after Waterloo, on the 2ist of June, 
 1815, Napoleon issued his last proclamation. " I 
 offer myself in sacrifice to the hatred of the enemies 
 of France," he declared. " My political life is 
 ended, and I proclaim my son, under the title of 
 Napoleon II., Emperor of the French. . . . Let 
 all unite for the public safety, and in order to re- 
 main an independent nation. NAPOLEON." 
 
 But the nation was paralyzed by disaster.
 
 NAPOLEON'S FAREWELL TO HIS SON. 
 2Q3
 
 THE SON OF NAPOLEON. 29$ 
 
 Union was impossible. The boy thus proclaimed 
 emperor was far from France, held by the enemy. 
 He was never to see his native land again, never 
 to see his father, never to reign Emperor of the 
 French. 
 
 For seventeen years the boy lived at the Aus- 
 trian court, practically a prisoner. His mother 
 cared little for him, and for years did not see him ; 
 his name of Napoleon was denied him; his titles of 
 Emperor and King were taken from him, and he 
 was known simply as the Duke of Reichstadt. 
 
 His grandfather, the Emperor of Austria, was 
 kind to him, and tried to make an Austrian of him ; 
 but he grew from a bright, handsome little fellow 
 into a lonely, low-spirited, and brooding boy, who 
 remembered his former grandeur and the high 
 position to which he had been born, and fretted 
 over the knowledge that he, the son of Napoleon, 
 could inherit no portion of his father's glory, and 
 was denied even the empty honor of his name. 
 
 At five, he was a beautiful boy, who rebelled 
 when his tutors tried to teach him German, and 
 delighted to play jokes on his royal grandfather ; 
 it has even been solemnly asserted that he tied the 
 imperial coat-tails to a chair, and filled the imperial 
 boots with gravel. At seven, he put on the uni- 
 form of a private in the Austrian Royal Guard, and 
 displayed a liking for military life. As he grew old
 
 CXEAT MEJTS 
 
 to appreciate his position. his gayety be- 
 gan to change to reticence and a lore for solitude. 
 
 ^> ^> 
 
 One off the Austrian generals was discoursing to 
 the boy one day on the three greatest warriors of 
 the world. **I know a fourth," said the young 
 Napoleon. 
 
 "* And who is that ? " the commandant asked. 
 
 **My father,"' replied the boy, proudly, and 
 walked away from the lecturer. 
 
 He was ten years old when his great father died 
 in his exile at St. Helena (on the 5th of May, 
 1821). The boy wept bitterly when he was told 
 the news, and shut himself up for several days. 
 He put on mourning, but the Austrians compelled 
 him to put it off, and permitted him to show no 
 grief for his dead father. 
 
 After this he grew still more quiet and secretive ; 
 he took to his books, became quite a student, and 
 wrote an able treatise upon Caesar's Commentaries. 
 When he was fifteen he was permitted to read 
 books about his father and the history of France, 
 and at sixteen he was instructed in the forms of 
 Austrian government, and the false theory known 
 as "die divine right of kings."* 
 
 When he was twenty he ** came out"* into society, 
 and was made lieutenant-colonel of infantry in the 
 Austrian army ; but he never * smeHed powder"* 
 nor saw war ; for brooding and solitude weakened
 
 THE SON OF NAFOLEOX UN THE CNIFOILM OF AN ArSTMAN COLONEL. 
 
 297
 
 THE SON OF NAPOLEON. 299 
 
 his constitution ; ill-health resulted ; his lungs were 
 touched with disease ; it is even asserted that his 
 constitution was deliberately undermined by the 
 Austrians in the hope of removing him by an early 
 death. Let us hope this is not true ! But the 
 early end came; for, on the 226. of July, in the year 
 1832, having reached the age of twenty one, the 
 son of Napoleon died in the Palace of Schonbrunn, 
 of consumption. 
 
 It seems hard, but death was the only solution 
 of what might have been a problem. Without the 
 will, the energy, the genius, or the selfishness of 
 his remarkable father, the son of Napoleon yet 
 had ambition, persistence, and a reverence for his 
 father's memory that amounted almost to a passion. 
 Without any special love for France, he cherished 
 that dream of empire that his father had made 
 come true. Had he lived and joined ability to 
 strength, his name might have raised up armies, 
 and again drenched Europe in blood the tool of 
 factions or the prey of his ambitions. He died, a 
 lonely invalid, and Europe was spared the horror 
 of a possible " might have been." 
 
 On the plain bronze tomb that marks this boy's 
 place of burial in the Carthusian monastery at 
 Vienna- near to that of another unwise and un- 
 fortunate Prince, the Austrian usurper, Maximilian 
 of Mexico the visitor may read this inscription,
 
 3<DO GREA T MEN'S SONS. 
 
 placed there by the Emperor, his grandfather : " To 
 the eternal memory of Joseph Charles Francis, 
 Duke of Reichstadt, son of Napoleon, Emperor of 
 the French and Marie Louise, Archduchess of 
 Austria. Born at Paris, March 20, 1811, when in 
 his cradle he was hailed by the title of King of 
 Rome ; he was endowed with every faculty, both of 
 body and mind ; his stature was tall ; his counte- 
 nance adorned with the charms of youth, and his 
 conversation full of affability ; he displayed an 
 astonishing capacity for study, and the exercise of 
 the military art ; attacked by a pulmonary disease, 
 he died at Schonbrunn, near Vienna, July 22, 
 1832." 
 
 The epitaph tells but one side of this boy's 
 dramatic story ; the other side is sad enough. He, 
 himself, gives us one glimpse of this shady side 
 in the brief but eloquent epitaph that he one 
 gloomy day composed, as he declared, for his 
 tomb : 
 
 " Here lies the son of the Great Napoleon. 
 He was born King of Rome 
 And died an Austrian colonel." 
 
 Could anything be more telling ? It was the 
 summing up of a life that, beginning in glory, went 
 out in gloom ; the prince of the Tuileries became 
 the prisoner of Vienna ; the dream of empire was 
 speedily dispelled, and death itself mercifully re-
 
 THE SON OF NAPOLEON. 30! 
 
 moved one who might have proved a menace and a 
 curse to Europe. 
 
 What his life might have been had his father re- 
 mained conqueror and emperor none may say. 
 But the star of Napoleon, that had blazed like a 
 meteor in Europe's startled sky, flickered, fell, and 
 went out in defeat and disgrace. Thenceforward, 
 the shadow of the father's downfall clung to the 
 boy ; for the son of Napoleon had neither the op- 
 portunity, the energy, nor the will to display any 
 trace of that genius for conquest that made the 
 name of Napoleon great in his day, and greater 
 still, as the gathering years leave far in the past the 
 tragedy of his downfall and his death. 
 
 Thus, from the son of the greatest philosopher 
 of antiquity to the son of the greatest soldier of 
 modern times, have we sought out and studied the 
 sons of the world's greatest men. Their stories, 
 one after the other, have almost without exception 
 proved that the shadow of a great name obscures 
 those upon whom it falls ; that few men inherit the 
 genius or the greatness of a world-moving or 
 a mighty father ; that, in fact, we must all of us 
 depend upon ourselves for character-building, and 
 that it is circumstances rather than inheritance or 
 education that bring out the real force in men and
 
 302 GREAT MEN'S SONS. 
 
 women and make them leaders of the world's 
 thought or moulders of the world's energy. 
 
 Because these boys, who have here been grouped 
 under the general title of Great Men's Sons, 
 amounted apparently to very little when placed 
 beside the fame or achievements of their fathers ; 
 because some of them were stupid, some were 
 wicked, and none were really great, let us not infer 
 that it is useless to pattern after our fathers or try 
 to equal them in what they were or what they did. 
 Great men, as a rule, are phenomenal ; they exist 
 because of the demand created by the needs of the 
 world into which they come. A Csesar or a 
 Washington, a Cicero or an Alfred, a Dante or a 
 Shakspere, a Charlemagne or a Napoleon, a Socra- 
 tes or a Lincoln, were needed when they came ; they 
 were men who set the world to spinning anew, and 
 their greatness was part of the world's growth and 
 a new starting-point for its progress. 
 
 That their sons should also be geniuses was as 
 unnecessary as it was impossible. Perhaps it was 
 the sons' misfortune that their fathers were so great ; 
 for the world expected too much of them, and he 
 who expects too much is generally doomed to dis- 
 appointment. To be just as good and just as great 
 as we can, irrespective of what our fathers were, 
 is, after all, the main thing for boys and girls to 
 attempt ; and he who lives a clean, wholesome,
 
 THE SON OF NAPOLEON. 303 
 
 honest, helpful, truthful, and useful life has made 
 his mark in the world and been of benefit to his 
 fellow-men no matter whether his father was as 
 great as the greatest, as humble as the humblest, or 
 as poor as the poorest. 
 
 " Honor and shame from no condition rise ; 
 Act well your part, there all the honor lies." 
 
 THE END.
 
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